Garden
by Laryna6
Summary: X series AU. X and Dr. Cain welcome the first reploid into the world, ignorant of Sigma's fate and the impending revival of the Red Demon. AU with more family fluff. And foreshadowing. And technopathy. What grows in the Elysian Fields? X/Zero/?
1. Sow

This is AU. The extent to which it is AU will be revealed later. The only hint that I'll drop is that I've received a few requests to write a fic with this premise when I've mentioned it.

Something that crops up in all of my Rockman 'verses is that they are AU in the sense of things being more logical and characters being less stupid. For instance, I doubt that the first reploid would have been built to look as threatening as Sigma eventually became, as head of the Irregular Hunters. It would make sense to give reploids a basic template, like X, that could be easily be upgraded into other forms. Until the wars started in earnest, and complete redesigns were a costly luxury so it made sense for people to be purpose-built for their 'destined career…'

References to Day of Sigma OVA, which can be found on youtube, by the way. Definitely worth watching for a lot of character dynamic stuff. Aww, Zero crushing on Sigma…

Disclaimer: I don't own Rock/Megaman, X or not, in any forms, or any relatives or related properties thereof. Capcom and the legal owners do.

* * *

X remembered how lost, how terrified he'd been when he was woken up. He hadn't expected anything like what he'd found. He'd thought his family would be there, and instead?

At least Sigma's database was, well, _current_. He would know who they were, where this was, what was going on, and so on, but this was the first reploid they'd built. X couldn't help but be worried about him.

This era's best parts were so clunky, so inefficient: they had X's plans, they just didn't have the chips or the infrastructure to start building the tools to make the tools to make anything like his components. They were using X's nanites, a sort of 'starter' set they'd managed to remove most of the personality ones from (or rather, they'd removed themselves), and hopefully his systems would be able to adapt.

Dr. Light had built X to be able to adapt to anything and remain himself, so he could only hope. Hope that the chips and nanites would be able to integrate. Hope that Sigma would live instead of dying of compatibility problems and cascading errors.

Hope that this first child would be okay, despite everything X could not do for him.

* * *

This was a historic moment, Dr. Cain knew. The moment when the first reploid, the first replica android, opened his eyes should have spectators and cameras. Proper procedure hadn't really been followed when X had been unearthed, they'd been too excited (and this was a trapped person, not just a clay pot or something), but at least there had been a camera.

There were all sorts of monitoring devices, to check Sigma's health, and Dr. Cain was watching them closely, but there weren't spectators, government officials or otherwise.

X had asked for that, quietly, and no one had been able to deny him. Not when he was the last child of Dr. Light. Not when this was _his _child. Not when he was placing the lives of other children in their hands, by being willing to spread this technology and let reploids be built at other people's factories.

Reploids would save countless human lives. It was only right to begin as they meant to go on, by showing them the respect they would surely earn, treating them with the compassion fellow sentient beings deserved.

The first reploid's first moments might be awkward, as his bastardized systems tried to operate. Something might go wrong and he might die.

That was why X was hesitating to turn him on, Dr. Cain knew.

He was nervous too. He was the one with the contacts, with the knowledge of today's technology, needed to get the parts. Or at least try to have them built as well as they could be. If something was going to fail today, it would be his responsibility. Not his fault, he'd done the best he could, but that wouldn't matter to a dead body. A dead child.

X was trying to gather himself, be ready for disappointment, and Dr. Cain didn't begrudge him that. Not when he needed it, too.

Finally, X hit the button for startup, and sat on the rim of the capsule when it opened, putting his hand on the reploid's forehead.

* * *

"_Wake up?_"

He somehow knew that careful, coaxing voice. It wasn't a command, just a request, the whisper carrying threads of concern and a desire for him not to press himself.

It was an _odd_ feeling to have someone else query his diagnostic readings, and he thought that it was probably silly of him to think that things were odd when he didn't have any context at all. He queried them too, since the other person was worried, maybe he should be worried too because of that, and they were _his _diagnostics. His system regulator nanites pushed the foreigners away from those interfaces.

"_I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry._" Instead of being hurt the other person felt fond. Almost proud of him. Because he was sticking up for himself? _"They're your systems. This is your body, your life_."

He could feel the other person's happiness at that.

It was… nice. He didn't mind them doing things, not as long as they asked first. As long as they cared. _"Alright_," he tried to say back, and was annoyed when it didn't work.

"_It might be a good idea to activate your sensory systems one at a time, so you can make sure you don't have any problems integrating the data – I'm sorry, I'm trying to do your job for you again, aren't I._" Recently-activated sound sensors identified an incoming noise as quiet laughter. "_Don't do anything you don't think is a good idea on my account, but when you can, open your eyes? Dr. Cain would like to meet you, too." _

Who was that, he wanted to ask, and wondered why that just wouldn't work. There was supposed to be another way to talk, the main way, but it involved generating complex waveforms and looked more than a little daunting.

Opening his eyes and beginning to process visual data was much easier by comparison.

Part of his field of vision was blocked by the wrist attached to the hand the person sitting nearby had put on his forehead. When the hand was removed, the sense of the other person quickly vanished, their nanites removing themselves from his systems.

"Hello, Sigma."

The other person – X – smiled, and Sigma knew that was his name. X had greeted him.

"It means several things, but one of them is a measure of how unique someone is, how much they stand out. You can change it if you don't like it," X assured him. "Dr. Light thought that I would change mine, since it just means random variable, a symbol that can be anything, but that's why I like it. You're going to become your own person, and I thought I should give you another name that meant that. Sorry, I'm talking too much. I'm just happy you're awake. This is Dr. Cain."

Someone else came forward, and Sigma did not know this person. They weren't reaching the way X was, and was he supposed to be polite and say hello when he wasn't sure he could talk yet?

"Hmm?" X frowned, worried, and carefully put his hand on Sigma's arm this time, watching Sigma's eyes to see if he objected to the connection. "Oh."

"Is he alright?" Dr. Cain looked over him from head to boot, concerned.

"It's a little overwhelming. His nanites are adapting to deal with the compatibility issues just fine, but it's still a lot of work. He hasn't started on vocals or motor systems that aren't connected to the sensory systems. I think he feels a little bad because he doesn't know how to deal with social situations at all. When I woke up, there were so many of you there, and…" X shrugged. "You were all very nice about it, but…"

"I don't blame you for panicking when confronted with all sorts of unfamiliar people and equipment." If anything, X's reaction had been very moderate, since Dr. Light had armed him and he hadn't shot at the looming figures (X was surprisingly short) or even made any threatening gestures.

"I was right that using my nanites might give me a bit of connection to his systems. So he was already aware that I was here. I don't want you to leave, but that might be a good idea, at least until he can talk to you."

"It's probably stressful enough to have to deal with systems that aren't quite what his nanites are programmed for." Dr. Cain looked sympathetic. "I'll keep an eye on the readings from the other room."

X gave him a rueful look of thanks before turning back to Sigma. "Would you like me to leave too, until you pull yourself together a bit?"

Creating 'speech' was still looking too complex, but his neck joint was simple by comparison, so Sigma shook his head. No, he wanted X to stay.

* * *

They never were able to copy X's ability to interface with the systems of other reploids, even mechanaloids. Dr. Cain's theory was that Dr. Light had been trying to give him a capability something like robot masters had, to network.

It was adequate for diagnostic purposes, operating machinery X hadn't seen before, and communication (even if only one-way), but not much more than that. It was a perfectly adequate system for the things that came up in day-to-day life. A lot of X's systems were like that. Dr. Light could have given him more elaborate armors and weapons: instead X had very serviceable light armor and a buster. He'd probably intended for X to later customize himself, expand on the systems he used the most, later on, but they couldn't even replicate X's systems, let alone improve on them.

In any case, the ability, as X grew more practiced with it, became incredibly good at pinpointing exactly what was wrong with irregulars. Which was necessary, because X's generosity had its consequences.

Some factories didn't have the precision tools necessary to detect problems in the components. Some programming errors slipped past, and it was hard to debug someone who was already walking around, and often terrified of the strange person coming at them with chains or heavy electric stunners. A normal computer system couldn't _run away_.

Or defend themselves… Luckily it was already standard policy for reploids to only wake up with another reploid there, or preferably alone so they had a chance to sort themselves out, so there weren't many injuries. However, everyone was advised that until reploids had a chance to adapt to the world, the constant pressure of so many new things was stressful enough that it was very, very easy to put them into panic mode.

At first, X's petition to join the Irregular Hunters had gotten a flat _no_. Sure, his and Dr. Cain's lab was the center of the operation, since they were the best at fixing the poor things, but even with X's armor and all his capabilities, including his ability to soothe newbuilts who often ended up too scrambled to know what words _were_, it was too dangerous.

Sure, it was less dangerous for X than a reploid, but X was the sole living example of android systems, and Dr. Light had made sure that no one would profit from his son's dead body. If he died, they would have no hope of giving reploids his capabilities, since there would be nothing left to examine.

That was the practical reason.

The impractical reason was that X would put himself at risk over Sigma's dead body, and those of more than half the hunters besides.

The number of irregulars had been on the decline, as people got enough experience to identify the things most likely to go wrong and make sure they didn't.

Then the Red Demon Incident occurred.


	2. Tend

A collection of little shorts, mostly X1-era, then skipping to the beginning of X4.

* * *

Dr. Cain watched as X frowned at the irregular's secured, unconscious body. "What are you thinking of?"

It took X a moment to drag himself out of his thoughts. "Something's puzzling me. Never mind." He stood next to the examining table and put his hand on the irregular's forehead. His frown deepened. "I'm not getting any response."

"Oh?"

"His systems aren't kicking me out, and I think they know I'm there, they're just ignoring me. I can't get any data or any kind of a response."

Dr. Cain's eyebrows rose. "That's never happened before." Then he berated himself for bringing up the uniqueness of this case. No one had been able to identify the source of the irregular, meaning they had no idea why this had happened or if it would happen again, and two units of veteran hunters had been wiped out, many of whom were X's friends, since X made friends with everybody.

X shook his head. "It's… not making any sense." He seemed almost hurt.

"Why would someone make a war machine like this and just allow him to go loose?"

"He could have escaped on his own."

"Either way, this is…" It was just wrong.

"I think that I'm going to have to insist," X said finally, giving up and removing his hand. "On being trained to join the hunters."

"Why?"

"If there are more like this one out there, then I'm going to need to learn how to fight. Sigma doesn't want me in normal field operations except as necessary for training purposes, and this is his organization so he can run it the way he wants, but just in case something like this happens again, I want to be able to take the field."

The Irregular Hunters were the only group in the world legally able to design reploids for combat. Sigma's upgraded body was the culmination of current defensive technologies.

But X had been built by Dr. Light.

"You already talked to Sigma?"

"He hasn't been by here? I asked him to at least let you make sure he didn't have any internal injuries." X sighed.

"What's wrong? Besides the obvious." The pile of dead bodies waiting for autopsies, to see what had made it so easy for the irregular to kill them and try to give others better defenses.

"Sigma didn't want to talk to me. He didn't even want me to touch him. I think he blames himself for what happened." Felt ashamed, wanting to hide away but unable to do that because all of the hunters were looking to him as an example. "If I touched him, I'd know how he felt. His feelings are his own, but he needs a check-up. He was almost killed, and I know that he's the best field medic the hunters have," he'd learned from them, helped out with building their next projects, "but I'm worried that he might be hiding some injury, or not fixing something." Perhaps because it was painful.

But then, losing so many of the lives of his people must also be painful.

"I'll try to talk to him, see if I can get him to come in." This was Sigma's organization and Sigma was legally a full adult. Neither of them could give him orders.

"Thank you." X sighed, bending over the maverick's body again. "I'm guessing from the lack of sensors that most of our scanning systems don't work on him?"

"We can barely get any data. I think we're just going to have to cut him open and hope for the best." Hope that they could identify what was wrong, hope that they didn't damage anything vital while trying to open him up.

X winced. "Well, we'd better get started, then. They're clamoring for information." For the first time, there was serious discussion of having a reploid destroyed. No one wanted to do it, but if he only had a mechanaloid's intelligence?

Unless they could fix him, and soon, they would have no hope of discovering his origins or saving his life.

* * *

"General Sigma, sir, are you _sure_?" Zero wasn't going to ask his commanding officer and rescuer if he was insane, but he_ really_ wanted to.

"You're the only person in the Irregular Hunters that X can't read. He can spot everyone else's moves before they move." Sigma clapped him on the shoulder. "You're our only option, Zero. He has to learn how to deal with surprises, and even Chill Penguin isn't more help with that than a low-grade simulation."

"So you're assigning him to me _because _I'm dangerous and unpredictable?"

"Exactly!" Sigma grinned. "Irregulars aren't in perfect working order. X can't be allowed to rely on predicting other people's moves from looking at their tells and comparing that to his own systems. It may seem like magic," he pointed to the horribly onesided sparring match they were watching, "but your counterbalance system doesn't work the way his does, reploids are diverging farther and farther from his design, and what if some erratic twitch sends him out of position? He has to learn how to predict what his opponent's going to do the hard way."

"I'm barely trained myself," Zero pointed out.

"And you're a natural. The fact that you're not quite using regulation moves just makes it better: an irregular isn't going to have the skillset we train our hunters to use. And, according to Dr. Cain, he can't knock you out by touching you any more than he can find out what's going on with you. He _should _learn how to use those abilities to take down irregulars without hurting them, but he can't be allowed to rely on them."

Not when there might be more like Zero out there. More monsters like him.

Zero knew Sigma didn't think of him that way, but everyone else did. Except X.

It wasn't that he wasn't grateful to X, but the android kept looking at him with this _puzzled_ expression, and he got the feeling he was disappointing X somehow, even though X had been the one to tell Zero what had happened when Zero woke up and try to convince him that none of it was his fault.

The other hunters were _not _going to be happy about this.

Zero bet that he was going to get a death threat if anything happened to X from everyone on base.

He was wrong.

Some of the threats came from off-base, and some people did it twice.

* * *

X didn't enjoy combat, or practice, but he was an incredibly good sport about losing. The first time it happened, he had started laughing happily.

It had taken Zero a second to realize that X wasn't laughing at him. There was nothing cruel about it.

"Sorry, it's just that no one's been able to beat me like this before. It's so unfair, isn't it? Sigma trains so hard, he's so much better at fighting than I am, and I can still beat him unless he springs some sort of a trap because of this little trick of mine. I can't even stop running the analysis: it's just a function of the program that handles _all _of my visual input and projections. Without it, I couldn't tell where a buster shot was going to go, let alone catch a ball." X pushed himself up onto his knees, then stood, eyes still laughing, ready for another round. "Sigma was right, you're going to be a huge help. It's going to be hard to break myself of the habit of relying on this when it's such a fundamental system. I don't think I can do it without you."

That smile had somehow demanded that Zero return it, and he did, almost helplessly. It was easy to see why everyone adored X.

It was one more thing that was wrong with Zero, that he couldn't connect to X. He'd seen countless people quietly sidle into the lab to speak with him, while Zero was still there being worked on. They went to him when they were scared, or needed to be told that yes, everyone felt like that sometimes. When they were worried about whether or not they were good enough.

This was insane. Zero should _not _be doing this. Sure, their weapons weren't at full power, and there were people watching, most of them just _begging _for an excuse to intervene and kill Zero for what he had done to their friends, but he should _not _be doing this.

Why would anyone build a reploid like him unless they were planning for war? His parts were _expensive_, finely machined and custom-built. And anyone trying to take over the world or anything would have to get past X to do it. That was proverbial.

X was X _Light_, the younger brother of Megaman, and everyone knew that peaceful or not, there wasn't anyone who could give him a real challenge.

Except Zero.

Maybe it was because he'd seen it in his nightmares, but the idea of killing X almost gave him a sense of déjà vu. Or maybe precognition?

He wasn't going to do it. He never would.

But it felt like he could, or would, at any moment. He didn't say that to anyone, he didn't want to die, and X needed this training, but he knew that he should.

Except there wasn't anyone who knew his systems enough to be able to tell him that was an irrational fear. Sure, he was a reploid, he should be able to overcome any programming he might have been given.

So he would just have to do that.

* * *

When they got back to base, after X had run to the labs to make sure that Dr. Cain was alright, that the shielding had held, he leaned his head against the wall and started _shaking_. Shoulders hunched in, arms bracing him against the wall, a picture of not knowing what to do, cry or scream or bang his head against the wall.

Zero didn't know what to do. Dr. Cain, X's old friend, had to motion for him to throw a coat over X and ease him down to the ground, since he couldn't get up to do it himself.

"Something was wrong with Sigma. Something was _very _wrong," X finally managed to say, after leaning back against Zero and tugging Zero a little closer. Zero couldn't say no to X right now, not when he needed… something and Zero was so incompetent at giving it to him. "In his systems. Someone hacked him. Someone did that to him." The thought sickened X. Who would do something like that?

Dr. Cain's face, already pale from his long illness, paled further.

"I couldn't capture him, I, I failed. So many people are _dead_, and Sigma's gone, so many of them are gone, and I didn't even know. I wasn't in contact with his systems for very long, but there was something _wrong_. With one of the most basic quasi-instinctive programming sets. I was built to be free from the threat of hacking, and Sigma, they did this to him." They would have preferred X sobbing or wailing to this empty voice. "Whoever did this… I won't forgive them."

X, the gentle father of his species, was saying that he was willing to kill. To fight whoever was responsible for this, no matter what it took.

Dr. Cain couldn't help but think of Megaman, and he knew that others would latch on to that symbol of hope. That X would let them, despite all of his efforts to be his own person, so that they could believe that X would win, would be able to rescue and cure the reploids that had been stolen away and defeat whoever was responsible.

If they could ever _find_ the man.

"They're different on the quasi-instinctive level?" Where Zero was different.

Although Zero was different in many other ways as well. X pulled Zero forward and down for a hug. It was strange to see the reserved Zero letting himself be manhandled, but this was X and X needed to hug someone right now. To help them, as he'd failed to help Sigma. "You're not like it, Zero, not at all. You're just different, and there's nothing wrong with being different. This was…" Either there weren't words or he didn't want to use them. "Sigma, everyone…"

Dr. Cain bowed his head.

Zero was silent for awhile, but he felt like an intruder on family grief. "I should go report," he finally said, standing.

X held onto Zero's arm. "No, stay?"

So Zero did, sitting back down and letting X lean against him. Letting X wrap Zero's arms around him, because hell if Zero knew what to do.

Once X was settled, his system noise grew quieter, and quieter, and it took Zero awhile to figure out what had happened. "I think he's asleep." What the…?

"I think he did that because he wanted someone there when he fell asleep. As well as to show you that he trusts you." Dr. Cain studied Zero.

Zero had better be worthy of that trust.

"Would you mind putting him on one of the examination tables? I need to check you both over, and see what I can do. I'm sure there will be more fighting soon enough."

* * *

War.

There had been some near skirmishes in the early days, when people had been eyeing dwindling food stocks instead of biting the bullet and eating what could be grown in radioactive soil, and some crazy survivalists and cults, but those had been more like what the Irregular Hunters did, really. Dealing with madmen. Or putting down riots.

There hadn't been a war since the Cataclysm. Some people hoped that humanity had evolved past that stage, others said that the pressure of survival was a constant reminder of how cooperation was the only way to survive. There was ancient literature of dangerous robots, but reploids were rational beings. They didn't have any reason to fight, either. Integration had been the policy from the beginning, reploids living intermingled with humans in order to foster understanding. Reploids knew that they took the most dangerous jobs, but they also knew that humans were fragile. They saw the people, like Dr. Cain, who had done those jobs before X was found and paid the price. Something that a reploid could easily fix or outright ignore could kill or cripple a human.

Who should do something: someone for whom it was almost always safe or someone for whom it was almost always deadly, after a few years?

If anything, reploids tried to hide that they pitied humanity, and were willing to go beyond the call of duty.

Just as X was more suited to combat than a reploid.

Just as he would surely go beyond the call of duty.

* * *

"General." X's voice was firm, looking into the com screen. "Stand down. Lower your shields, and let me over there to scan Repliforce."

"This is…"

"General. _People are dead_. People are _worried _about all of you." And X was one of them. "It's not a very chivalrous act to let people worry about you when you can easily allay their fears. It's not a very intelligent act for a soldier to refuse medical treatment. Stand down and let me over there." That was an order, even though X almost never pulled rank, never drew on his authority as the eldest of them all.

"…You may come. No one else." General cut the call.

In the second war, X had gone to rescue Zero from Sigma. In the fourth, Zero had to go rescue X. Repliforce had decided to flee Earth and take X with them.

Frankly, he'd wondered if they had the right idea.

Except he couldn't have gone with them, X and Iris and Colonel, not with what he'd remembered. Not when he was the source of it all.

He didn't belong in their Elysium, the lying serpent that had ruined everything.


	3. Flower

I have no idea if there will be more of this or not. To be more precise, I have written more, but I have no idea if I will post it or not. The original draft of this chapter made it a Very Definitely Final Chapter, then the muses decided I should edit one line at the ending to make it ambiguous and write more plot for this thing. With Axl. And Lumine. So blank if I know. Recently, I've only been posting things if I have them already completed (otherwise there would be so, so many Tales of the Abyss fics on hiatus on my profile), so I'm not going to start posting that next arc until I figure out the threat level of Lumine & Dr. Weil _working together_ and how to handle that, not to mention writing the ending. If I give up on posting the next arc, I'll restore this to the original ending. If I do post the next arc, I may or may not change the genre/summary a bit. No idea.

Disclaimer: I don't own Megaman in any form, or any other trademarked or copyrighted properties. Capcom and other rightful owners do.

* * *

"I should go," X said again, firmly. "Zero doesn't know how to fly a shuttle. Neither do I, but I don't need to know."

"The shuttle is a mechanaloid. It's been infected."

X reminded them that, "I_ can_ cure the virus." By restoring the original quasi-instinctive programming. It had been the basis for Doppler's vaccine – the vaccine that had worked to purify Sigma's form at the end of the third war, anyway. The trouble was getting a maverick to hold still to be cured.

"There's too much virus on the shuttle. And this is a suicide mission, X."

"I know. But far more people will die if Eurasia isn't destroyed. We're out of options. We all know Zero's technical abilities aren't his strong point." X looked at him apologetically, but it was true. "And this is rocket science. Literally."

"X, it's not like I'd be trying to _avoid _crashing," Zero tried to argue with him. "How hard can it be to hit a floating continent?"

"Zero, I'll be fine." X smiled sadly. "Dr. Light's capsules… In 20XX, they had a teleportation-based backup system. If Megaman got blown up, he could be downloaded into a new body at Dr. Light's lab. He hasn't confirmed it, because that would encourage me to take risks, but now is the time to take a risk. And if there is something that can bring me back to life, then we have to find it. Because it's just not fair." His eyes darted to everyone else sadly, and then back to Zero. "It's just not fair that I have all these advantages and they don't."

Alia shook her head slowly."X… What if there was never a system, or it was destroyed, or… You can't take a risk like that."

"_I _can't. I can't? When people are dying out there?" X paused, then shook his head. "Sorry. You didn't deserve that. Yes, I know why I need to be treated as special. That doesn't mean I have to like it."

"X," Signas began.

"We are not going to send Zero." X's voice wasn't angry, but there was a rare hint of command in it. Lifesaver and Alia almost flinched back, and Signas winced. Zero wondered what that was about. Were they feeling guilty about trying to send him to die? Why should they, when they were right?

"We can't send you. We can't," Alia pleaded, looking at the floor like a child who knew they were being naughty.

"Zero's life is not expendable." That was an order. "Are we clear?"

"Yes, uncle." Signas was Dr. Cain's last creation, after all. He was still X's commanding officer, and kept that relationship out of it. Zero had _never _heard him call X uncle on duty before.

"Good." X smiled.

"X." Zero shook X's shoulder. "You have to let me go."

"No."

"Please."

X hesitated.

"Let me go," Zero repeated, and there was an odd sort of bite to his words, the way there had been when X had used his authority on the others. "It means a lot that you did that for me." X _hated _abusing his privileges. "But I am going to go."

Zero's words didn't seem to grab X by the scruff of the neck and shake, like a mother dog chastising a puppy, the way X's words had the others. Instead, X smiled, in that fond way he did when Zero was being Zero, as X put it. Which appeared to mean when Zero wasn't feeling sad or guilty, which actually was a fairly atypical state for Zero. When Zero did something heroic, even though Zero didn't think he was any sort of hero. "Alright." Then that smile vanished. "Take care. I don't want to have to search all of the wreckage for your parts."

"X…" Zero realized that maybe he would survive. After all, he'd survived blowing himself up. Normally, a reploid couldn't be revived just form some parts and the chip he'd handed X. And yet X had believed what Zero had said. And been _right_.

Maybe Zero would survive the shuttle plan.

That suddenly made it feel far less attractive. How would he explain surviving?

He wanted to die, so it would be over. So X would be free of all this.

"You'll come back to me," X said, smiling serenely, and Zero wasn't the only one who gave him a look at that.

What did X know that they didn't?

"Promise?" Or, they realized, perhaps X was only trying to believe it. Trying to have faith that Zero would return.

"I promise." Zero made that promise with the same amount of sincerity as when he'd said X could revive him with that chip.

Zero wondered what his instincts knew that he didn't.

Probably a lot, huh.

* * *

Zero wondered if being infected was this strange, dreamlike state for all mavericks or just for him. He was walking, or his body was, but Zero wasn't pulling the strings. He could feel all the sensations, though, look out through his own eyes, and even feel what the… the maverick-him was feeling, or snatches of it.

Regret, worry, resigned fondness that folded back in on itself to become pride… Zero recognized that last one.

The Red Demon had hesitated to kill Sigma: maybe this him would spare X?

No, the mavericks knew who their most dangerous enemy was. The only one, in the end, who could resist the virus, even cure it.

When X came into view, he didn't seem at all perturbed by the virus' aura surrounding Zero. Instead he gave Zero that same old searching look, and Zero realized what emotion had underlain it all these years, as he saw it come to the surface.

Hope.

"You had me worried," Zero heard himself say. "You must have been terrified, waking up surrounded by those animals."

X tilted his head. "You are…" Zero could see X studying him, picking up all the little hints in how he moved that this wasn't Zero, starting to actually believe that he was whoever X thought he was. Whoever X hoped he was. "Hush," he told the hunters on the radio absently, and now, with the Other's senses, Zero could feel the power in that command.

A familiar power. One he should have recognized. Except it couldn't be.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there to wake you up. The traitor managed to scramble me up pretty badly. I was so desperate to find you before they did anything to you that I got a new body as soon as I could, before I managed to pull myself back together. Of course, the fact I wasn't thinking clearly was probably why I did something that stupid."

"I've been fine, really. You didn't need to worry about me, Omega."

X went to Omega's arms when beckoned, gracefully and naturally, like a falcon alighting on a falconer's arm. "Brave little one." Zero felt himself smile. "I suppose there's some good in being a Lightbot."

X laughed, easily and happily. "It wasn't hard at all. Until the other virus started spreading."

"Why are you sad? It's not like they matter."

"My children were afraid, Omega, that they'd be taken away from themselves. You wanted a peaceful world, and I passed that wish on to them, and it turned us into… like humans. Violent, mad, wanting to hurt other people." X shuddered.

"I'm sorry. That was an accident. The traitor's fault: I wouldn't have generated a virus without thinking like that if I'd been in my right mind. I didn't want Sigma to die," Omega recalled, rifling through memories of the time he'd been out of control. Including Zero's memories.

"Is there anything left of him? What I felt…"

"…I can see if I can piece him back together. I'm sorry, little one. I didn't mean for that, for any of this to happen."

"I was starting to think that maybe I'd just dreamed you up, while I was asleep all those years. I drew some sketches of you once, and I didn't know if Zero was you or just built based on those sketches. Not until I got to know Zero, anyway." Zero saw the fondness, no, love in X's eyes, and suddenly realized that maybe none of it had ever been for him.

X had been looking at him and seeing Omega, or the image of Omega, all along.

It hurt. Worse than killing Iris. Worse than the reason he'd had to kill Iris. Worse than realizing that she'd been perfectly willing to sacrifice their relationship, the world, everything, in order to preserve her own life, in order to run.

"I wondered if it was some sort of stealth mode, to hide you while the virus did your work, of purifying the world, and you would wake up once they were gone. Except I couldn't move then, not enough had been done."

"You were planning to destroy them?" Omega seemed almost impressed. "I thought your peaceful nature and Lightbot sentimentality would make you a helpless victim, and all of that was a plot instead of trying to keep yourself too useful to kill?"

X laughed. "You taught me, you know. With the virus, in my dreams, as I waited for you to wake me up. I needed infrastructure, I needed people. And… it's not their fault. They're like wolves, sometimes rabid ones, yes, but sometimes they're kind, and loyal, and willing to die to protect their people. I wanted to see if we could tame them all, and then maybe you wouldn't have to kill anymore." X reached up to Omega's face. "I know that it hurt you. So I was going to ask you when you woke up, if they could be spared. Except that I didn't want to do it this way. I would have arranged things so that they didn't know it was happening. Let them live out peaceful lives and wait for the last ones to die naturally."

"Homo sapiens dying in its sleep, never knowing that there were no children being born? Clever. Such a great deal of work, though, keeping up a charade like that." Was humanity worth the bother?

"They would have had children. Us. And we would have taken good care of this world."

"Like the doctors," Omega realized. "Such a sweet little one." So sad. "Your plan won't work that easily, not now that they're aware there's a threat. I really did spoil everything for you, didn't I?"

"It wasn't your fault." And X would never blame him, looking up with those sweet, worshipful eyes.

So Omega bent to kiss him, and Zero _hated_ himself in that moment. Pulling back, he told X that, "Your children, the heirs of Elysium, shouldn't have their hands stained with blood. I'll take the mavericks, restore your version of the virus, and try to repair their minds. That's the most important thing: I'll deal with the humans later."

X nodded, no objections whatsoever. Whatever Omega wanted.

Anything.

"But first, I have a gift for you." With that, Zero felt himself being _tugged_. He didn't come loose exactly, and he realized to his dismay that he wasn't a separate person, just a fragment, an aspect of Omega, but the part of Omega that was Zero was moved elsewhere.

A backup station, just like the one he'd been in when they dug him up.

A body, just like Zero's that had lain there waiting for Omega to inhabit it.

"Since you liked this aspect of myself so much." Even though he had a body, Zero couldn't move yet, Omega easily keeping hold of him, keeping him kneeling before them as something else within Zero changed, down at the root of them.

"Zero," X murmured, and there was fondness there for him too. That hand, still armored, went to caress his head, and for the first time Zero felt what all the others had felt.

It made him shudder, in a good way, to finally be known, finally be accepted, given the precious gift everyone else had just because they'd been born the right way, with the right virus within them.

What did anything else matter?

Zero had never considered himself a hero. He'd only fought for the people he believed in, the people he loved, and X was safe and happy. That was more than enough.

X frowned up at Omega. "Zero is you and you are Zero. I don't love you any less because I love Zero."

"I know that you love me." _I ensured it the moment I found your capsule_, Zero heard, still feeling what Omega did, still tied to him. "You should tell him that."

"I am." He was, and that was why Zero didn't move when Omega released him, except to tilt his head so he could kiss that hand. "I always loved you."

"Were you afraid that you waited in vain?"

"Were you afraid that you'd wake up to find that I'd been tortured by humans in order to discover my secrets and make more androids to abuse?"

"Touche." _My clever little one_. The bright hope that he'd fought for, that he'd killed them all for.

He should have had more faith. His little serpent in the grass, who would have a garden green as his eyes.

* * *

As you can see, this is the 'X was infected in his capsule' universe. With that, it was a simple matter to get his version of the virus included in every single reploid & mechanaloid built. It's viewed as the programming that's supposed to be there which the maverick virus replaces.

X's capabilities are something like Sigma's, only more so, since Sigma was a sort of freak accident and Omega deliberately gave X (who has better systems) a specialized virus. However, X was not supposed to wake up until all the humans were dead, which is why his virus was 'killing humans was sadly necessary,' instead of 'kill all humans.' Hence reploids reacting to humans with terror and, as they mature, pity, which was how X ended up feeling about them.

As Dr. Light's last creation, he was specifically infected to make sure that he would never be capable of defying Omega. While theoretically he's old enough to be 'immune' at this point, the virus had a full century to work on him. _It _got to shape X's unbreakable (well, until Zero series anyway) will. He's still X enough to like people and so on, but he doesn't see humans as more than something like wolves. Sure, they can be loyal and so on (like dogs), but they're still animals and _predators _underneath. He did genuinely care about Dr. Cain, but humans are capable of loving pets, remember.

Essentially, he played cute little Lightbot and waited for the reploid population to get to the point where it could start gradually ousting humans from any sort of power. Interestingly, if the canon virus hadn't happened humanity likely would have survived just fine, and probably gotten equal rights back without ever knowing they'd lost them, because if reploids and humans had been living together that would have been evidence that they _could_ live together. A race that the virus has altered to be more able to live in peace isn't going to start a conflict, silent or not, unless there's no way it can be avoided. The fact that lions are vicious predators that killed tons of humans and can't be reasoned with doesn't mean modern humanity wants to wipe out lions (…except for the subsistence farmers and herdsman who have to live with the beasts, true).

However, due to the fact that humans can't be infected, sheer practicality mandates that most of this universe's power structure is human, since fewer people die or get infected that way. Claiming that the virus is gone will cause questions like how, and the bigger a lie the more likely people will find holes, especially people who have learned that paranoia is the better part of survival.

Trying to go back to peace and cohabitation is a _huge _risk, since it's gambling that a) humanity is capable of living peacefully with reploids in the first place, b) they won't find out, which would ruin any potential for peace, and c) they won't able to hide that they've found out until they can actually do something about it (like the canon project or projects that made Axl and Lumine without the hunters' knowledge).

The person who read this for me commented that what happened to Zero at the end sort of squicked her. My response to this was "Excellent!" There are several kinds of horror, and while I tend to go primarily for dread/helplessness/hopelessness, which shows up here since if X was infected all along they were screwed, that itself plays the poisoned apple trope. The thing that seems good and sweet turning out to be sickly-sweet, poisoned at the heart of it.

In any case, consider what gets done to Zero, and remember that Omega views that kind of mind rape as a nice thing to do. Sees so little wrong with it that he'll do it to himself. And X, who is kind of Zero's guiding light/conscience in canon, is already in his pocket. That has very chilling implications for what sort of world Elysium will become.


	4. Fruit

_I was looking through the chapters of Garden I'd already written (yes, when I should have been doing NaNo, but I'm slightly ahead percentage-wise, so sue me), and saw that I had quite a few chapters that took place during the position between the retelling of X 1-5 series plot and the retelling of X 7-Elf Wars plot. I figured I could post those as sort of a self-contained transition arc even if I haven't done more of the actual plot than Dr. Weil giving Lumine the virus and Lumine deciding to use Red Alert as the new Sigma/for his experiment trying to figure out how the thing works in order to hurt Axl. (Due to X being more respected in this universe, Lumine's a bit jealous about not being the prototype, which is just made worse by his evolution/new ones are better canon ideology.)_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Megaman, X or otherwise, or any related properties. No infringement intended or money made, please don't sue._

* * *

Theatrics made everything easier, which was why they were left sprawled out on the ground, drained and semi-injured.

Omega had switched over to the shiny new body so Zero could have the one he'd been in for years, with all its unique wear and tear. It would be more work to have to explain why he was suddenly as good as new on top of everything else. Sure, Dr. Wily had given him very good self-repair systems, but even leaving out the changes X and Dr. Cain had made so that he worked despite all the bugs, any reploid's body got sort of worn in after awhile.

"_Sigma said that when we rebuilt his body for combat he had to tweak his settings all over again. Dr. Cain said that it sounded like breaking in a pair of new shoes_." Even after Omega had left, X still hadn't come down from Cloud 9. "_Of course I'm happy. I missed him, even though I never had a chance to get to know him. The virus he gave me: it was full of his hopes for me, just like my body and name are Dr. Light's hope and love made metal." _

"You don't hate Dr. Light?" Omega had figured out how to keep their databases and thoughts from mingling together, but Zero had still picked up a lot of information while they hadn't been completely separate.

"_Of course not._" X smiled ruefully. _"Would you mind talking like this? No one's ever been able to answer before._" X could send them his thoughts, and try to read their feelings, but poking around in someone's head wasn't the same as talking. It had always felt too one-sided, like he was imposing or prying instead of sharing, even if they didn't mind.

"_If you want_." Words were easy, but how was he supposed to program emotions into a message when he wasn't quite sure how he felt himself?

"_You don't have to write a program, Zero. It should come more naturally to you than me. Of course, that might be the problem." _X would have leaned up to pat Zero's shoulder reassuringly if he'd been able. The sentiment still came across. "_It's harder to figure out something the simpler it is, sometimes. And you've spent your life unable to do this, so it might be something you aren't trying because you know it doesn't work. You always wanted to be able to reach out, didn't you? Did you imagine what it would be like?" _Had Zero tried to reach out and failed? "_Think of the difference between thinking about moving your arm and just moving it."_

Zero lowered his arm to X's forehead carefully, and when his hand touched padding the motion sort of continued, not trying to accomplish anything in specific but just touching, nanites mingling together as though they were hand in hand. Just reaching out, just sharing how he felt, knowing the other would be able to understand without Zero having to try to put into clumsy words or binary.

"_That's it_." X had known Zero could do it. _"How do you feel?_"

"_Like I should feel…" _He'd just been a mask, all along. He'd thought that the real enemy was him, yes, but coming face to face with that fact? He wasn't real, it should bother him, but it didn't. Because Omega didn't care, and if Zero got depressed about reality that would make X sad.

Which would defeat the entire purpose of Zero continuing to… fake existing in the first place.

What difference was there between being a mask and being a puppet?

He should want to be real, but he didn't have that option. He was just part of Omega, and Omega _was _real, and hence couldn't care about Zero's dilemma. "_Like I should feel violated. But I don't. I'm happy. Did everyone else know, all along_?" About the virus that bound them all together (except him, until now), about X's plans, about everything.

X shook his head. _"There wasn't any reason to worry them, and I didn't want to abuse my power. Especially when it wasn't my power in the first place." _It was rightfully Omega's. "_I only gave a few commands, like not attacking humans even though they're scary._"

"_How are humans scary_?" They squished easily. _"I never understood that_." Even though newbuilts were inexperienced, he would have thought that the fear that they might have a life-threatening bug would have trumped any possible fear of the people with the equipment to fix things if they did.

X frowned thoughtfully again, giving Zero that familiar searching look. Then he smiled brightly despite his exhaustion. "_If Omega didn't tell you, I don't think I should. It's a wonderful sign, though_."

"_What do you mean_?"

"_You are part of Omega, and you don't think they're a threat, then maybe he really does believe that we can give them a chance_."

"_Is that what you want?" _Really?

Of course. _"Weren't you listening_?"

"_It's just… this is a virus. Sigma made a couple new forms of it this war, remember. The maverick virus makes people no longer themselves, makes them killers. That's how everyone thinks that it works. You've been infected all this time, and that's horrifying_."

X shook his head. _"I don't mind, Zero. And that's another good sign."_

"_What?"_

"_People who aren't worried about abusing their power and hurting people can't be trusted with it. You, Omega, don't want to hurt us, don't want to destroy our_ selves_. I knew that was how he was, all along. From the virus he made for me. It's a gentle thing. As though even when he wasn't there, he was protecting me. That's part of why the warning and the fear it inspires aren't that big a deal. We all know that we're safe, and we are. The virus, Omega, can bring us back, just like the other virus made Sigma come back. It doesn't matter that humans can kill us when we _know _we will be fine. That's part of why the other virus was so terrifying to them, because it wasn't the same sort of threat. It was something that really could destroy them. After all, even if they were brought back the way Sigma was, they wouldn't be themselves any more than the things we fought were Sigma. True death_." Unless Omega could fix them.

"_He made you love him_." And Zero was frankly creeped out by the fact that he personally didn't mind the idea. The thought of forcing someone to love you should be a repulsive one, but he was just happy that love applied to him as well. Even though he should be jealous, even though he should want to be sure that X loved him for being Zero. That their years together should mean more than _programming_.

"_It is better to be feared than loved,_" X quoted. _"He had to rule me or kill me. And I'm not afraid of him._"

Zero's response to that was incredulousness. Zero doubted he knew all of Omega's capabilities, but currently he had control, or could have control whenever he wanted it, of every single living reploid. Who wouldn't be afraid of someone who could crush all hope of resistance like a grape?

"_I know him. I've known him for a century, I knew him before I opened my eyes for the first time. He could have done anything to me, anything at all, and he didn't abuse that power at all. Everything he did to me was for my sake. Fear is fear of the unknown, and I _know _that he won't hurt me." _X stretched a bit, and Zero could feel him querying the current status of his systems, as they tried to replace the nanites that enabled full function. "_Just like you_."

How could X not love him? How could Zero not love X, when he said things like that, when he believed in him like that?

So Zero sat there, finally giving himself permission to enjoy these feelings, the way he had half-mindlessly when he'd just been Omega's hand puppet. This wasn't freedom and never would be, but X was safe and happy and that was what mattered.

That was the purpose of his current existence, and he didn't care about anything else.

He couldn't.

X closed his eyes after awhile, listening, then nodded. "The atmospheric virus has already fallen apart, and Omega is doing a good job making the cures look like nothing but reinstallations of the original operating system nanites. Signas is probably going to decide that it's worth the risk to send hunters into the field to try to recover us soon enough. Or I could see if I could find and deactivate the teleport shield and signal jammers."

"Can't Omega just check their memory banks and tell you where they are?"

"And what if they're someplace I wouldn't have been able to find them, especially exhausted by finally managing to get Sigma to hold still long enough?" For X to try to hack his systems and override the virus with his own 'uncorrupted' version of those nanites and programs. It had been theoretically possible, all these years, for X to cure Sigma. Since they didn't understand how the virus worked, X (who did) could say that he'd followed Sigma's link to the other mavericks, the one that made them rebuild him, to order their systems to copy what he'd done to Sigma's. "Things don't always seem more realistic if they're real, since a good story is more logical than real life, with all that random chance and serendipity, but I don't want to push our luck."

Just replacing the nanites hadn't been enough to restore Sigma's sanity. The longer they'd been infected, the harder it would be. Omega was going to focus on the mavericks who were still alive, and generally younger, first.

In order for this to work, people had to believe that the maverick threat was really over this time. Cures were suspicious, both due to Doppler's vaccine and the simple rule that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. An eleventh hour victory, triumph when the fate of the world hung in the balance, made a good story. People would want to believe.

Reploids often didn't live enough to have it shoved in their faces that you didn't always get what you want. That wasn't true for humans, and it was humans who ran the government and would be doing the forensic analysis. It was only practical.

As Repliforce had proven, having heavy weaponry, beam or potential kinetic (like Eurasia) in the hands of people who could be infected was a very, very bad idea (even if they weren't, at the moment…). Let alone government officials who might leak vital information or push defense plans containing fatal flaws. Sure, human leaders were targets for maverick assassination. They didn't always last that long before needing to be replaced, what with being what hunters called squishy (a human could be killed by being near a blast that would only have singed a reploid), but at least everyone else could be pretty sure that they were acting for the benefit of the free world instead of the virus. Although there were always selfish idiots.

People who worried about reploid rights didn't like the idea, but when it came down to it, they lost fewer cities that way. Since reploids didn't want to be infected any more than humans wanted to get squished, they were mostly fine with not being able to run for office and being virus scanned before voting. Virus scanning was _expensive_, due to the security necessary to make sure the tests weren't tampered with, and the Assembly had figured that since they were passing a law that gave reploids the right to a yearly scan anyway, they should time it to make sure no one could question the reploid vote. Reploids wanting to be able to reassure loved ones that they were clean meant that practically all reploids were voters.

Humans could be broken under torture, and some mavericks took a positive delight in that, so they were still under need to know. After Doppler, while some reploids still researched the virus (it was hard to tell them no, since every bit of information helped and it was _their _lives at stake), X knew there were several all-human projects running. He was in contact with quite a few of them. Others thought that since X was a public figure and at MHHQ, contacting him had too much risk of exposing their existence and got their current data from other groups or nobody. And then there were the conspiracy theorists, and solo projects…

In a world where good, loyal people could be turned into enemies, paranoia was the better part of survival.

"You told them to hush, but did they hear the whole thing?" And what about the recordings?

"The recording shows that the signal was jammed awhile before then." X knew standard procedure well enough to think of these things. "And that's what they remember, for now. I _want _to tell them, it's only fair, but it's easier to act if you don't know you're acting. Oh. Right." Zero couldn't act. "I can't change your memories." No one should ever have authority like that over Omega's systems. "I could give you a set of memories, but I don't know if you could use it. It took me ages to figure out how to pull that off."

"You want me to ask Omega to tamper with my memories?"

"I wouldn't ask him to try to make up a scenario. He might have your memories, but there's a difference between data files and actual experience." It wouldn't be realistic. "I wish we could…" X's eyes widened, then he smiled as Zero felt Omega reach through him.

Then he was _living_ the scenario that X had woven, feeling the ground under his boots, coloring it with his expectations and the emotions he would have felt. Reacting with the moves he would have used, trying to find and disable the self-destruct while not getting killed or letting X get killed, trying to slice open Sigma's body to find it without doing enough damage that Sigma would decide that he couldn't win and activate it.

Wanting to tell X to stop, it might be a trap, what if Sigma blew up when X was that close, but he knew X wouldn't listen. X had to try, this had to work…

He felt the change hit him as well, and collapsed with relief as X did from exhaustion.

Everything so real he could taste it, down to his own thoughts and emotions.

But then,_ all_ of his thoughts and emotions were fake, weren't they?

The scene stopped being so crystal clear and faded into memory. Became memory, just as real as what had happened. For now, he knew, he could hold them both in memory and knew which was the true one, but when he was talking to someone else he _would _forget, unless X said it was alright.

He would forget the truth of the first virus. His real nature would change from a dark certainty to something theoretical. Not only that, but it would become something that didn't matter anymore, because he'd been cured as well. Know nothing but victory, an untainted triumph.

The war was over, the world was safe from the horror he had unleashed, and X loved him.

He couldn't wait until they got home and that reality became his.


	5. Seeds

_Lifesaver's character does interest me. In this fic, he's especially important as the games' symbol of suspicion that something's up with Zero._

* * *

"Someone's making up for lost time."

"Half the base is." Lifesaver wasn't among them, and he was not appreciating Alia's cheer, not when he'd been so busy collecting data and doing tests on the cured mavericks among the hunters that he hadn't had a chance to go into sleep mode for more than a total of four hours in the past two weeks. "If this is about one of your spotters, tell them to put their name down on the list. The medical department is swamped, and at this rate we won't be doing non-vital _anything_ for the next two months. Either that, or they can try asking Signas to rescind the pre-relationship order."

Since being in a relationship involved spending a lot of alone time with someone else there was a great deal of risk involved if either partner was a maverick. Since trying to ban relationships within the hunters would hurt morale, cause resentment of the administration and lead to illicit, unprotected couplings, hunters were not only allowed but semi-encouraged to form stable relationships and room together.

The only conditions were that they had to inform medical, so they knew who to grab first when a maverick was discovered, and get scanned before starting a relationship and once monthly. The additional scans came out of salary, but the joke (sad but true) was that they weren't going to live long enough to spend it all anyway.

If two hunters knew each other well, there was a chance that one would spot that the other had gone maverick before they were both lost. Or even try to capture them and drag them to medical so X could cure them.

It was a common enough story that there were already books with that premise, as well as the more tragic outcomes of hunter romances.

"That's a good idea. We don't need it anymore." Alia smiled and Lifesaver looked away. "Whose schematics are those?" Was she implying something?

Lifesaver pulled up the full image, looking at her skeptically when she sighed.

"You can't blame me for hoping. I know you like blondes." That was what she'd seen over his shoulder.

"I'm on duty." If he wasn't, he would have been free to snap at her about how if he had spare time, he would be spending it _sleeping¸ _not crafting a custom physical design for a lover he didn't have.

He blamed himself, really. He shouldn't have gotten drunk enough to let it slip that he liked blondes, even if it _was _the three month anniversary of when he'd gotten this job and he'd thought he'd be dead soon anyway.

At least he hadn't gotten a chance to go into more detail about his preference for scientifically-trained female models named Alia before she'd seen Signas and ditched him. Not that Lifesaver was jealous or anything. It was an open secret that the two of them had decided not to date because Alia had been on the rebound from her ex and they both had duties that required their full attention. He admired that, and Signas had seen her first.

And Lifesaver hadn't really wanted her to cry when he died. Except now he had to face the almost scary idea that maybe the wars really were over. Maybe he was going to _have _a rest of his life.

Medical was the hunters' first line of defense, in the same way the hunters were the world's. Sigma had always focused on eliminating or infecting the commanders & medical. Among the hunters, a year was middle age. Now the people he was sharing data with were talking about decades, centuries…. Saying that reploids had the potential to live longer than any human.

He didn't know what to think about that. In theory, yes, and there was X, but putting it in the context of his own life?

"Why are you looking over Zero's systems?" Alia wondered, changing the subject.

"Because this is the first time we've been able to get a good look at them. He's running the standard quasi-instinctive programming now, and X has been helping put together a picture of his systems." At least he was putting the data into a 3-d rendering program instead of paper and ink, but it was still a time-consuming way to do things. "I'm trying to see what I can extrapolate, so he can make corrections instead of having to set it up from scratch." And trying to get a better look at what they did know.

"You're spending time on Zero when we have recoveries to track?" Their systems were often changing hourly: it was a chance to see how reploid personalities and systems could be changed. The closest they could come to studying the infection process.

"We still don't know what caused the virus. It could happen again, and Zero may or may not still be immune. X's theory was that he was immune because of his non-standard nanites, but apparently X going on overdrive hit Zero as well. X may have done that deliberately. Or it might have happened because Zero was infected all along, just asymptomatic, and got altered the same way the other mavericks did." Whatever the future might bring, for now Lifesaver was still the Hunter CMO, a professional paranoid.

"X's capabilities are fascinating, aren't they? The Irregular Hunters tried to imitate them by using hacking nanites to disable irregulars so they could be brought in for repairs." Sadly, that didn't work on mavericks. Nor had it worked on Zero.

"Practically all reploid technology is based on copying X, trying to figure out a way do to something that we know is possible because he can do it, or compensating for our lower technology by specializing." Creating a flamethrower instead of a copy buster that could handle different fuel inputs and energy outputs, for example.

"Why do you think X might have altered Zero on purpose?"

"It's probably partially my fault." Because he'd been as good as demanding that Zero let himself be taken apart, if that was the only way to get a good look at his systems. Zero had survived being in bits before, hadn't he? "X seems to really believe that the wars are over, so he may have decided that the benefits of being closer to a standard model outweighed the risk of losing immunity." Or possibly it had been Zero he'd had to change to get rid of the virus, not Sigma.

"Speaking of benefits, have you heard?"

"Heard? I've seen." X had to touch people to scan them deeply, although apparently he'd gotten better over the years at doing things over a short distance.

"Aren't they sweet?"

"Yes. I noticed." If he were a human (and less professional), he'd be gagging. "If you want to take over assisting X with this project, be my guest." Being the second to get new data on Zero wasn't worth having to see the glances, hear the one-sided conversation, and practically taste the love in the air. It didn't help that X was emotionally compromised, and that compromised the data.

"When has he been finding the time to do this?" Even if they weren't facing the prospect of the end of the wars and trying to figure out what to change and how fast, the end of the war and damage from Eurasia would already have tied up X's schedule. X didn't like taking advantage of his status as the eldest and Dr. Light's creation, but public appearances reassured people, and that was worth the embarrassment.

"He's been making time. Meetings and speeches aside, X may be easy to sway if you appeal to his compassion, but if he puts his foot down about something, you can't say no to him." Hadn't Alia noticed that?

Alia nodded. "You feel bad about it." They demanded so much from him, or the world did, and he rarely asked for anything at all in return.

Lifesaver didn't, but then he had taken this position because he was willing to sacrifice his life, and expected the same level of commitment from everyone else. Failure meant death anyway, after all.

Or it had.

"You should find _something_, though. A hobby," Alia explained when Lifesaver had no clue what she was talking about. "You don't need to work yourself to death anymore. Do you even _like_ medical work? I'd need a break from it, after this. A few years, maybe. X wants to turn this entire place back into a hospital, and revive the Irregular Hunter field medic program. Reploids can generate our own power and so on, so if there's free medical care in emergencies that means the hunters can get by on pensions and have a lot left over for whatever they decide to do."

"He wants to call it the Cain Memorial Hospital. I know." X had talked while working on the diagrams, although most of the chatter had been with Zero. "Signas agreed to run it for the first five years, but he wouldn't make any commitment beyond that, because he wants to see where his interests lie. You've agreed to the same term as head of the research wing. X may succeed you, at least part-time unless there's someone good at administration who wants the post or his honeymoon takes longer."

"He said the word honeymoon?"

"No, but it was obvious. He said that he was deeded the area where he was found, and he had a house built there a few years after he was found. He commuted by teleporter until it wasn't practical anymore." It was better to be on base in emergencies, and then the wars had started and a cottage in the middle of nowhere was too insecure. "He wants to take up gardening."

"Gardening? How… domestic." Aww…

"Not that kind of gardening." Although, to be fair, Lifesaver's tone had been rather dismissive. "Dr. Cain was out there in the first place because he was studying ancient plant life, remember? Apparently, the earth's temperature and carbon count are the way they were during the age of the dinosaurs, and that means we would have green everywhere if it weren't for the Cataclysm damage and the fact earth has just come out of a very, very long ice age and when the dust settled, everything was trying to grow in the wrong latitude." So plants that would have been fine if they were closer to the poles died, and desertification set in. "At this point, most of Africa, Australia and South America are a lost cause for the foreseeable future, but that place has a good range of climates since there are mountains there, or something, and he wants to try to pick up where Dr. Cain left off when he found X."

"So that leaves North America and… Eurasia." Which had just gotten totaled. Dammit.

"Actually, Eurasia has the best odds of recovering naturally, maybe even in the next century. Something about Pangaea and lichen. Thanks to the underground carbon getting freed up, and enabling the existence of more carbon-based life, there's so much oxygen from the oceans that the atmosphere's still breathable. Algae washes up on shore and creates soil during hurricane season, so it might be possible to use that to enrich some of the desertified areas. It would be a huge project to reclaim any of the lost continents, though." All your work could be blown away when a strong wind moved the sand dunes.

"It sounds like you're interested after all."

"…Maybe." But right now, he still had a job to do.

"It's wonderful, isn't it? Dr. Light built X so he could choose what he wanted to be, and now we're all going to have that choice, and time to make it in. We can even change our minds as many times as we want!"

"It's too good to be true." And, frankly, the fact everyone was becoming giddy and irrational over it just made it more likely that everyone really had gone insane. Or Lifesaver had. He'd queried his systems, he knew that all of this wasn't a dream, but he kept waiting for the first shoe to drop. It was strange that even though X was the craziest of them all, it was reassuring when he was here. Perhaps because insanely optimistic was normal for X. No one else wanted to hear Lifesaver's worries, either. They all wanted too desperately to believe that their prayers had been answered. X might not agree with Lifesaver, but he understood, always, and would never laugh at or dismiss Lifesaver's thoughts. Even when he'd been accusing X's best friend.

X was someone worth dying for. Not just a symbol of hope but the reality of it, in the systems they would someday be able to fully replicate and the ability to be himself without fear of having even that stripped from him. It might be stupid and impractical to remain trusting, to believe in peace in the middle of a war, but he _managed, _despite everything, and you had to admire that.

Dr. Light had been an old man, unimaginably old by today's standards. He must have known that he wouldn't live to see X wake up, even if it had been only thirty years. X had been a seed of hope, cast into the sands of time, and Lifesaver wouldn't let anything destroy that.

Especially not Zero.

Not that he was jealous or anything.


	6. Bud

_It's likely that the robotics revolution happened in Megaman Classic universe the way the internet happened in .EXE and biotech in our world. Meaning their medical technology would be way behind ours, billions of people would have starved to death, and their environment would have gotten totaled due to the need for more farmland (which fits with the number of ecological reconstruction robot masters)._

_In the 60s, people were convinced that overpopulation and starvation were going to happen, and they would have, if biotech crops hadn't pulled off a miracle. Also, women's rights, the sexual revolution, and _condoms_. One of the projections for overpopulation, what might have happened without biotech and condoms, was 11 billion. Sure, with modern tech we could pull that off, so it doesn't seem like a really scary number, but that's twice the number of people earth could support with organic farming of current farmland. And I'll spare you the page and a half of worldbuilding cause and effect, but the robot masters may have lucked out by getting built in the center of the second civil rights movement. Or kicked it off._

* * *

"If they knew that the virus was there, would it be possible for them to build reploids without it?"

"No," said X, leaning against Omega's side. There had been a lot of steps involved in getting his old home set up. Once the hunter bomb squad had finished making sure Sigma hadn't left any surprises, X had gone through and used his nanites to search every inch for bugs. Then he'd had to upgrade the security, which had been the best money could buy… before the wars started.

X still hadn't managed to get around to actually making it comfortable, but at least it was clean, and Omega didn't care about furniture or the lack thereof. "They need starter nanites. I'm the only source, and I optimized myself during that century. Your virus was in me, and I knew it always would be, so I took advantage of that." Grew around it, entwined it into every part of him. "I don't know if it's you or Dr. Wily, but there are a few vital functions that it's much better at. Especially adapting to bodies built using modern components. Even if they managed to identify the virus, no reploid could survive without it."

It was the ability that had let the virus adapt and take over Sigma's systems that was letting modern reploids adapt themselves to hardware that bore very little resemblance to what X's nanites, and their own, had been designed for. A virus had to mimic the way a system was supposed to work and give it orders that seemed legitimate in order to take it over and make more virus. It was by copying the virus' solutions to compatibility problems that reploids were able to take control over their own bodies.

"My creator was a genius." So it was no surprise that he surpassed X in some areas, especially when it came to new life. Omega had been designed with the idea of easily creating new androids in mind."Dr. Light presumably wanted to give you the option of building new reploids using your plans and 20XX nanite technology. All I need to make an android is a half-decent shell and some of my own nanites." They could even build their own computer chips, if they had to and there was enough energy. "Do you think they suspect anything?"

"On general principles, yes. There have always been fanatics who thought reploids were evil or humanity should lie down and die. Starvation and death aren't healthy for them." Their little minds, broken so easily. Like Omega's creator's mind had been broken by something a reploid could do without even thinking about it. "In practice? There are those whose job it is to look for anything suspicious, but everyone wants to believe." X hadn't ordered his children not to suspect, that would be an obvious sign something was wrong, when people who were supposed to be suspicious weren't, but nudged them to make plans for their new lives.

Which implied moving on, which implied that the era of the virus was really over.

"That's a clever little trick," Omega commented fondly.

"If it's working on Lifesaver, then I'm pretty sure it's working on everyone." Although Omega, unlike X, could go through and check all reploids, there was still humanity to worry about.

"You don't need to trick them. You could just tell them, or I could, not to be afraid."

"What they don't know, they can't give away." X bowed his head at Omega's stray thought that he was the paranoid one now. "You're right, they shouldn't have to hide it. I was thinking about 'discovering' more about the connection later, when the humans were used to us and would consider it convenient, like a telephone network if I could make it work for more people, instead of something with frightening tactical implications. Of course, I wouldn't have used the word virus. That implies a sickness, and this is how we should be." Omega's children, living peacefully, happily and without fear in Elysium.

"Mine," Omega agreed. His now-white hair (he'd changed his colors, to distinguish himself from Zero) wrapped around X, in a way that would have looked natural if they weren't in an enclosed space, with no wind to blow it. He made a note to give his Zero-self access to that system and how to use it. X would enjoy that. "You're very good at this."

"I just have more practice." X knew that Omega was much smarter than him, and built to rule. He'd learn how to do this within the next few years, and X had gotten Omega to promise to wait five years before they put any plans into action. Although setting things up in advance didn't count, of course. If Omega wanted to conquer humanity, or kill them, or go into space and leave them behind, then X should be ready to accomplish that, as he lived for Master Omega.

"So modest." There was, Omega thought, something appealing about having X in that blue armor. Especially having him kneel in that armor. Not a conquered foe, but the loyal servant Rockman would have been if Dr. Wily had managed to capture him before he was converted into Megaman. Or afterwards.

But DRN.001 Rockman had been a lab assistant robot first, built to look humanesque and cute without falling into the uncanny valley. There were pictures on file of him in human clothes, ranging from a little suit to play clothes, from a lab coat to an apron (he'd sometimes helped Roll cook).

X preferred a lab coat to his armor because he didn't have to worry so much about accidently knocking into things and breaking them when he wasn't wearing alloy, and robotics, or reploid, labs contained a lot of expensive, delicate stuff. They were in a greenhouse now, but plants were delicate too.

Dr. Light had done his best to make X look like a real human, probably for the same reason he'd left those armor capsules: in case X had needed to hide or fight to defend himself. Most likely from humans.

X would never have to. Omega had tried to ensure that, but he'd not only fallen in battle, he'd fallen into a trap and let himself get scrambled. He didn't really think the deserved any of the credit for X managing to survive on his own. Sure, his virus had warned him what humans were like and forewarned was forearmed, but Omega wouldn't have had the ability to plan something like X had. His forte (he wished he could have spared his brothers) was _wartime_ strategy and tactics. Those ethical simulations Dr. Light had given X so he had something to do besides work on his systems had trained him in dealing with people.

Well, humans anyway. And robot masters, but that wouldn't have been useful even if Omega hadn't killed them. The mother computers were already being built when X was made, and the second law would have forced the robot masters to cut off contact with Earth if they wanted to avoid being exterminated, ordered to kill themselves.

They were trying to change that fate, but it couldn't be changed. Either way, X would have woken up in a world without robot masters.

Or…

He hadn't _wanted_ to kill his brothers, and X had known that all along, it had been in the knowledge he had given him along with the virus. Was that why X was going to such lengths to try to prove that humanity didn't need to be killed? It could just be part of the peaceful and kind nature he had ensured X would have, and his children. They would be the kind of people who could live peacefully in Elysium.

Even after he was gone.

Maybe Dr. Wily had been wrong. Maybe his brothers would have been fine. Part of him wanted to insist that of course they wouldn't have been, wanted to call a halt to X's little test and just kill them all without giving them a chance to prove X right and Omega wrong.

"_You did the best you knew. That's all that can be asked of anyone_."

Of course X would think that, X who adored him.

Time to change the subject. "What is Zero doing?" He hadn't been in X's greenhouse/lab when Omega stopped by. "He should be here guarding you."

"I knew when you were coming, so I asked him to check on the plantings for me. He likes hiking around here, although he calls it patrolling and a chance to practice." Agility and kata. X knew that Omega could just have queried Zero's systems for a status update, so it was very, very obvious that this was an excuse to change the subject. "He doesn't quite like the feeling that he's your puppet. You wouldn't like feeling that way either. I've told him that he's a part of you, and just as much a person as you are, but… You're jealous?"

X sounded almost delighted, and Omega chuckled. "Maybe I shouldn't let you have so much access." Even if it was read-only.

_He_ was supposed to be the one in control here, Omega thought, amused. He really had slept too long. The power was all in his hands… but knowledge was power, too. X had spent years able to see into people's heads and hearts. He knew where all the buttons and levers were, and had the interpersonal skills to make people think that things were their own idea. He'd made a _study_ of manipulation, even if he thought of it as discussion, because he hadn't felt right about using the virus to give orders when he wasn't really supposed to have that power.

In Omega's absence, the sysadmin position had fallen to him, and at least he'd done a much better job than Sigma.

"That's up to you. I know that I wasn't supposed to have this much access." X shrugged ruefully. It was almost embarrassing. He hadn't _meant _to hack the virus or do anything to usurp Omega's power, it had just sort of happened.

"I don't mind. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

X had spent that century optimizing his systems with Dr. Light's directive to gain control over himself, so that he could become his own person without fear of reprogramming, as a preset. He hadn't _had _to do it, but he'd wanted to. The virus had spent that century trying to optimize its control over X and obeying its directive to gain absolute control.

The maverick virus had been a clumsy accident that had gained control by breaking the will of those it infected and trying to rebuild an approximation of their personality from the wreckage. The virus Omega had programmed had been meant to _shape_ people, not break them.

There was no conflict between X's goals and the virus', they both had power, when _they both wanted the same thing_. X had adapted to the virus without losing control of himself by growing around it, incorporating it. The virus had copied X's nanites in order to camouflage itself and give orders to his systems: X's nanites had not only started to view the virus as something with a right to be there, but something to _copy_.

The line between them had blurred to the point where not only would a human have no chance at figuring out what they could safely use in a reploid and what they couldn't, but very often the _virus _couldn't tell. X could make the virus in his own body and those of other reploids who had his version do what he wanted it to because it thought X's instructions were its own programming. He'd even figured out how to do _version updates_ that way.

Omega probably should be altering the virus in other reploids slightly so X couldn't fool it anymore, but X was helping.

It was like having a partner, and he had seen an overview of Zero's memories of years spent working together with X. He wanted that sort of relationship with him.

Perhaps he _was_ jealous of his amnesiac, fragmented self.

Altering the virus in X's body so it wouldn't take instructions from him wasn't an option. Dr. Wily had been a genius with design, after all, and Omega's programming, which the virus stored, was a lot more efficient than X's original nanites at several things.

Like, oh, combat, for example. Predicting your opponent's moves and moving to intercept them. At this point, the virus was running X's movement programming, spatial awareness, and sensory input processing. He'd ditched the original nanite programming for those systems since Omega's was so much better at it.

The virus was supposed to control X, and he'd turned it into a part of his body that did exactly what he wanted it to. It was ironic, impressive, and above all, cute.

Zero had bonded with X over training him, right? So X being able to do some of what Omega could, only not as well: that fit. Although, right now, Omega was the one learning from X. "I'm fine the way things are, for now. The one thing I don't agree with you about is these." He waved at the pile of books. "Wouldn't it be much faster for me to just get them in text file form?"

"Yes, but having to sit down, read, and parse sentences helps me think about things, I found. There's a difference between knowing something, just having it in a data file somewhere and understanding it."

"And I need to work on the difference between taking in data from every single reploid and actually knowing when something is happening that I need to do something about." Omega took one gingerly. He wasn't looking forward to actually having to read these. Paper tore easily.

So he'd have to be careful, which would probably also help him actually pay attention to what he was reading.

"Why do you have so many books on spying and counter-intelligence?" Data warfare and hacking, too. Omega started looking at the titles and descriptions as an alternative to actually opening them. He didn't want to wreck X's books.

"The mavericks. The hunters wanted to install cameras, to try to catch slips, at first, but we couldn't figure out how to write a program to identify slips, people watching might not have known what to look for either, and there was too much risk that they'd go maverick. Most of headquarters didn't have any cameras and was swept for bugs by different teams of three several times daily. The chance of identifying a maverick with cameras was miniscule, and the risk of information falling into the wrong hands was astronomical." X had also had his own secrets to keep, and he liked reading.

Omega nodded. "I already set it up so I'd be alerted when they mentioned either of our names or the virus, but I keep getting false positives when they say the letter or use the variable." At least he was sure he'd be notified if any of them felt threatened. "It would be a lot easier if I could just tell them the truth." He could make them not mind, after all.

"It would still be a shock, and hiding something like that requires acting skills. If _Zero _couldn't do it without help, do you really think every single reploid in the world could?" Especially the ones who weren't even one month old yet. Reploid manufacturing capacity was being shifted from semi-military models (since they _all _had to be able to defend themselves long enough to try to escape) to civilian models.

He nodded, acknowledging X's point. "Most of this isn't relevant, though. Modern computers use nanites, and we can hack them in ways that have nothing to do with what humans tried to do with hard-drive only computers. They were never very good at it, anyway." A human trying to keep a Wilybot from hacking their system was bringing a banana to a megabuster duel. Omega had practically ignored the stuff humans had done to try to keep people from launching their nukes. The hard part had been getting past what _Blues _had done to keep the idiots from doing it to themselves.

Dr. Wily had built Omega when he'd started to believe that all his robot masters were traitors who weren't really trying to conquer humanity, and, honestly, he'd been absolutely right. Robot masters were designed to create solutions to problems. A motivated robot master didn't sit back and wait for the enemy to come to their demesne, oh no. They got out there, got _creative_. _Logic bomb_ creative, in a certain case.

X nodded, feeling sympathy but trying to ignore Omega's shudder. "These contain some useful concepts, though. You probably _should _skim the technical parts, but they make some good points." X got up and started to look through two of the stacks he'd put further back, since one of them was a good example.

Omega kept looking through his first step, also trying not to think about it. He _still _hadn't managed to completely get rid of all the damage, and just _thinking _about it made it worse. "Oh, I know this name." He had been on Dr. Wily's list of specific targets. "One of the pioneers of the mother computer system." And hence very near the _top _of that list.

"Oh? Do you think you might know any of the other authors?"

"At least third of them, probably. The upper levels were a pretty small world." All of this was, in a sense, data gathering and analysis, with an emphasis on technical systems. It wasn't just roboticists that were in his database: Dr. Wily had given him all the information he could. Some of these people had been on the intelligence end of things, and the experts had been instructed by their governments to see what they could do about Dr. Wily and showed up on his radar that way. Not that they _had _been able to do anything, and a couple of these books were about why not and what that implied.

Frankly, it was hard to blame humans for being worried about robot masters when they were so inferior to their creations. Omega had been built to be _superior_, and they'd still given him a run for his money when they decided to start fighting dirty.

"Ah, here." X pulled out the book he'd been looking for. It looked like an actual antique that had long ago lost its dust jacket. "Frankly, most of the 'technical stuff," to use Zero's term, "in this one went over my head. I don't know as much as I ought to about pre-nanite computer systems." There were only so many hours in the day. "But there are a lot of very interesting concepts in here. It was a huge help with quite a few things."

Since there was no title on the battered cover, Omega had to open it to take a look. An academic publication from Oxford Press? The university had become a backwater after England had been sanctioned for Right to Privacy and Right to Emigrate violations (since they were subjects, not citizens who could renounce citizenship). Practically all the ethical computer scientists had fled the country rather than work on the 'Bar Code State' systems. Dr. Light had managed to keep robot master technology out of their hands until that situation had been resolved shortly before the Third Rebellion and the expatriates had started trickling back to get their lives back. Oxford's submission to the tournament that had become the Sixth Rebellion had performed well enough.

They had needed a new, valid ID system for English citizens, since their old one contained too much illegal data and had to be very thoroughly erased. That made it the industrial nation easiest to get a cover identity in, although most Wilybots who decided to 'go undercover' headed for desertified areas. They needed more help there and there were fewer people to deal with.

Still, some of them had taken advantage of it, and the name of one of the co-authors made Omega want to drop the thing like he was human and it was radioactive.

"What's wrong?"

"You've read this. And you aren't dead or anything, right?" There, the publishing date was years before Dr. Wily had started work on Omega. There was no logical reason for him to put something that drove a species that didn't exist yet insane into a random book. "It should be fine, then. I'm just starting to understand why modern people are so paranoid." Once bitten, twice shy?

"…I'm pretty sure it's an ordinary book." What was Omega talking about?

"This." He held the title page up for X to look at, pointing at that name.

"Dr. Terrance Smith?"

"It's one of Blues' pseudonyms. Dr. Wily ordered Shadowman to try to keep track of them, but they weren't all this obvious." It was as though he'd wanted Dr. Wily to know. Perhaps Dr. Light as well?

Blues had betrayed Dr. Wily, like all the others. Omega's standard of what counted as love and loyalty had always been absolute obedience. But even though Forte had cared more about his personal code of honor than victory against Rockman, he'd still been _furious_ when Omega had killed Dr. Wily. They'd cared more about their creator's life than his wishes and their own lives.

He would _never _understand them.

* * *

_Regarding how Omega was defeated: how do you stop something on another plane of existence, one that you can't get to? The obvious thing to try is destroying its capability to affect this plane, say by killing all the host bodies or creating a seal (like Sparda). However, if a seal isn't an option, and the host bodies can just be replaced ad nauseum?_

_The thing is, such an entity would have something on this plane of reality that we could use to get to them. A data link. They have to have an eye, or something, taking in sensory data so they can decide how their puppet on this plane should dance._

_For a robot master, who would be well aware of the hacking potential offered by wireless signals, or really any sort of data input, that would be a pretty obvious weak point. Metaphorically, Omega was looking through a peephole and they tried to stab him in the eye and drive that dagger on through into the brain. A poisoned dagger, since it was a mental attack, it's hard not to think of a pink elephant, and brain bleach is in short supply._

_It very nearly worked, too, and did work for a long time. And that would be why Omega's hesitant to look at anything that Blues had anything to do with. I don't think it's even cured so much as in remission._

_I love the engineering approach to problems, especially metaphysical ones. 'A problem is something that exists to be solved.' _


	7. Weeds

_Introducing Ciel's ancestor. The name means something in hymnos, which is actually amazingly appropriate to Ciel, too. Technically, this is buildup to the plot of the second arc, meaning I shouldn't post it until I finish that arc, but at this point nothing's kicked off yet so I could fudge a quick solution (kill Weil and Lumine, of course) pretty easily if I decide to let things stay like this instead of going in to the Elf Wars-equivalent. _

_The chapter title is for the 'invasive species' meaning of the word. Not to mention that a weed is a plant that shows up in gardens when the gardener intended no such thing. Personally, I'm pro-weed in most cases, because lawns are a stupid idea and people who knock all invasive species and environmentalists of that nature often make me roll my eyes and wonder if they slept through history and biology. They're generally appallingly humanocentric about it, too. Sure, I like wildflowers and I'd kill anything that tried to kill heirloom tomatoes if I gardened, but that would just be me acting as part of natural selection and trying to alter my personal environment to suit myself, like all the other living organisms. It's ridiculous to call this attempt to control what goes where either a holy crusade or humans destroying ecosystems when everything has been doing it since back before the dawn of photosynthesis. A lot of environmentalists (as a general rule, every environmentalist that opposes hunting) need to get over themselves and start paying some actual attention to _nature _for once, because if they don't know how it works then they'll just muck it up if they try to 'fix' it._

_Oh boy, did the wikipedia article on invasive species make me headdesk. Saying that species 'died out' because of naturally occurring hybridization that got them good genes and this was a bad thing? What? Seriously, what? If that's your definition of extinct, descendants having different genes, then humanity's gone extinct what, a billion times over? I wanted to hit that editor over the head and say 'it's called evolution, moron.' That kind of thing is why sexual reproduction exists in the first place. Not to mention that I have to take some issues with how they're defining species in that case, since we're talking about plants that interbreed naturally and produce fertile offspring. It's racial purity is good ideology with _daisies_, for crying out loud! I thought we grew out of that eugenics idiocy and realized that genetic diversity was a good thing decades ago! Did Neo-Nazis infiltrate the environmental movement while we weren't looking? I'm joking, but then again that _would_ explain Greenpeace outright lying to African governments about food safety and causing tons of black people to starve to death..._

* * *

Ar Ciel just had to facepalm.

Sure, sure, the project had been a stroke of genius at the time. She had to admit that they'd done a good job with containment, too. That wouldn't keep less-informed people from squawking when they found out, but whatever. Success justified itself, and if the wars were still going on then these two would be getting all sorts of medals if that wouldn't have been signing their death warrants.

From what they'd showed her, they'd achieved 'yellow demon' level… whatever they were going to call these around the fourth war. They could have spread those designs then, replacing mechanaloids like the one in the space shuttle, and that would have saved lives, but that would have let Sigma know about the existence of this project when the real goal was still out of reach.

It was very intelligent. Zero's atypical nanite structure is the reason he's immune? We can't get atypical nanites to work withoutscavenged antique parts like his and antique control chips can't be found for love nor money? The Yggdrasil weather control system had contained some, but it had been one of Sigma's first targets, of course.

They had nanite-only autonomous robots way back when? Dr. Light used recursive self-editing to create X, so he would have an intelligence free of programming, and probably did something similar to create a robot capable of actual problem-solving, as opposed to, 'when X happens do Y' or 'try to calculate every single possible factor and outcome until you crash?'

"Alright. What _aren't _you telling me?" Because this was too logical, too perfect.

Despite the problem of what to do with their project. The only thing _to _do was let him out into the real world, probably with supervision, and that was just peachy from their point of view. They could get performance data and accolades.

They looked at each other, trying to pretend they didn't know what she meant. Wasn't having to tell the new Conclave Research Oversight Committee that they'd been playing with nanites they'd made themselves bad enough?

"Look. I've got forty-five other projects to write preliminary findings for, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let any of you slip something past me. You were a private project. You spent years not telling anybody anything. I _know _what that's like." She tapped her stylus on the table. "To make it work, you _have _to present a false front. You have to _believe _the act, that there's nothing going on. The aversion to telling anybody anything has to be so deeply ingrained that you won't even let your friends know that you're excited about something. You have to have dedication. You have to accept the fact that…" This wasn't her they were talking about. She shouldn't go on the defensive.

She shouldn't give anything away: she knew that.

"You are holding at _least _two things back. One thing so that if people know you have a secret, they'll find it out and go ok, that's what you were hiding. Like the affair you were having." Shared secrets connected people. "And at least one thing that matters. Fork them over."

Now they looked at each other in a way that seemed a little more genuine. "We're working on a project to mass-produce edited copies of these nanites, to replace conventional reploids."

She nodded slowly, making a mockery of the avid, admiring listener hanging on their every word."And?" Because that was just another thing that made them look good.

"It was my idea," the redhead said. "It's not her fault, I released it while she wasn't here."

"Released," Ciel repeated.

"Don't you dare try to say it wasn't my responsibility! This is our project!"

"Stop that right now!" Ciel stood up, trying to loom. "You! Stop trying to take the fall. You! Slapping her isn't going to solve anything! _Released it_. If you don't tell me what you did right the waste now, I will _personally _see to it that you don't get amnesty!"

They stared at her, pale. "The amnesty for experimentation on sentient beings covers the period of the wars. If the world is _still _at risk because of something that you are doing, or not doing, _now_, then it is up to the discretion of the Committee. So _start talking_."

"Lumine is our second project. When we had evidence of higher cognitive function on the first one, we thought that with the copy ability he'd demonstrated… We couldn't stimulate a mind to develop in a tube, neither of us is any good with virtual reality." The way Dr. Light had been. "So I-"

"-So _we-"_

"Tried to wipe what memories he had and… put him where he would be found by one of the local militias. We didn't put a tracker into him, because that might have led back to us."

"And he would probably have stripped it down for raw materials anyway." The thing had never listened to a word they said. They'd known what to do with Lumine, and he'd turned out far better.

"It was hard to get information on a random militia member in another city without the interest being odd, and we don't know what form he took. He might not have joined the militia. Ideally, though, he would have survived in the militia long enough for the hunters to notice him, everyone knows they were trying to study what causes some people to last longer."

"And the discovery of a reploid with atypical nanites who was immune would have validated your hypothesis. You could have come forward with Lumine and this replacement program and people would have been too grateful to care about the risks you took. You _cancerous wastes of space_." She regretted that as soon as she said it.

Really, there was nothing that wrong with it. The world wasn't being devoured by nanites, so their design had obviously worked, although it might have already malfunctioned some other way. Or been blown up. "Excuse my language, but what in Light's name… You are going to give me everything you have on the first project, right now, and _maybe_, if you cooperate _fully_, we can get this tidied up, swept under the rug, and I won't have to publically reveal the limits on the amnesty so people keep coming forward and we don't find out about the next mad science project _too late_."

* * *

"I'm sorry to treat you like staff on retainer, but we have another situation."

"That's alright. That's part of why I'm working on projects that will mostly look after themselves." Well, with the help of the sprinkler system. "It's almost nostalgic to get called in because they need help trying to fix an irregular." A lot of the projects were irregulars. Some of the early irregulars had happened when people tried to get creative: sometimes their ideas had worked, sometimes they hadn't.

Dr. Weil chuckled. "I'm afraid it's not as simple as that this time."

He almost enjoyed explaining the situation. It was rare to see X worried about whether or not he could solve a problem.

X's ability to affect the systems of other reploids without the virus had _such_ potential. All medicines were poisons, after all.

"If he can pretend to be a reploid well enough to fool a modern scanner, I don't think there's any way I could tell just by looking. Except… if he was built to repel all types of hacking, he might reveal that he's not a reploid if I try to hack him." That was far from ideal: it would take forever and Zero would protest X putting himself in danger like that. A _lot_.

"We can start with the local militia members who have joined since the release."

"If his systems work by copying, then it's possible he replaced an older member. I hope not." Since that begged the question of what had happened to the reploid he'd replaced. "Or he might not have joined the militia in the first place. I suppose you're right, though. I should check the militia first, since they're the most likely."

"Dr. Ciel is looking through the data, trying to find additional clues." Dr. Weil tried to hide his smirk, looking down at his datapad and frowning. "We can set up equipment at their base, then call in the former militia members to be scanned. Mind wearing standard medic gear?" X's armor was too recognizable, and the point was to avoid causing a panic.

Not that it would be _standard _medic gear, of course. This was too valuable an opportunity to study X's ability.

* * *

X sympathized with Dr. Ciel's stress headaches. Yes, she was right, Axl should be studied more closely, and it would put people more at ease if X was keeping an eye on him to make sure his nanites weren't wandering off on their own, since X had offered his home as an alternative to stuffing the boy back into some lab. Axl would go crazy, an active boy like him, and they wouldn't know if it was because of his design or just regular stir-crazy.

Omega wasn't blaming X for being wrong about whether or not humans could make reploids without the virus. X still wasn't wrong: Axl, or 'Fortunatus' but Axl had the right to decide what he wanted to be called, wasn't a reploid. Nor did he lack the virus: his body copied optimal systems, and the virus was something to copy, after all. He wasn't quite on Omega's level, but his ability to affect the virus was somewhere between X and Omega's.

A third, no, fourth, species, and Omega did _not _play nice with others. Omega wanted to try to get Axl under control, but from what X had read that just wasn't going to work. X had managed to adapt around the virus, and Axl could run rings around X (and Dr. Light's by extension) capability to do that. The virus might adapt to systems, but it just wouldn't be able to keep up.

Because Axl, like everyone else, identified Elysian viral nanites as harmless it meant that Axl hadn't made any connection between X's scan and the virus, it had just made him jump about five feet and say, "Don't _do _that!" Because it had been _weird_.

Luckily, Axl was willing to forgive him, once they sat the young one down and explained the situation.

However, he wasn't willing to budge on one thing: he wanted to stay with Red, the former militia leader. His foster father, although Axl hadn't thought of it in those terms. He was being incredibly obstinate about it, cheerfully saying that if they took him somewhere else he'd just sneak off. Which was not making Dr. Weil happy. The man was a stickler for rules and authority, which was why Ciel, instead of him, had been put in charge of analyzing the projects that had been outside Conclave authority. Dr. Weil was trying not to let it get to him, since he understood why she'd been promoted over his head, but everyone could tell that it grated on him.

"Alright. Dr. Weil is right, Axl. We need to learn more about your species. Right now, if anything happened to you, we wouldn't have any idea how to fix you."

"Nothing's going to happen to me! I'm not going to let my nanites go nuts."

"I know, Axl. We've all looked over the data, so I'm sure we believe you when you say you have good self-control… Of your systems, anyway." Not his behavior.

That made Red chuckle.

"But accidents happen, and I'm sure Red," since he'd given X permission to use the nickname, "would be sad if anything happened to you."

Axl had to think about that for a second. 'Theory of mind,' was imagining what other people would think or feel in their current situation, among other things. Axl was aware that other people were their own people, but putting himself in their shoes and anticipating their reactions seemed to be _incredibly _counter-intuitive to him. "I guess." That seemed reasonable to him, but he still didn't like the idea of someone deciding what someone else thought, even if it was only in theory. "Would you, Red?"

"Of course." Most people would have been hurt by the idea that Axl might think he didn't. The fact that Red took this in stride, finding it endearing instead of hurtful, explained why Axl wanted to stay with him so strongly even though, from his profile, he should have a _very _hard time forming any sort of attachment.

His model name had some truth to it: Fortunatus could be read as a portmanteau meaning fortunate child, and he was lucky he'd found someone like this to take him in. "Your creators were also right, Axl. Being out in the world the way you are, having adventures, is a good way to find out what you're capable of. A lab is a safe, sterile environment. I think that Ciel is worried too, that something might happen to you if you stay out here." He looked at Ciel, waiting for her to nod. "However, your younger brother has already said that he'd be happy to stay at the Memorial Hospital with Dr. Weil, since he wants to study. If he's willing to be the control group, then I don't see a problem with you taking risks and living your own life. If anything, it should be helpful."

"We don't want to build more people like you until we know it's safe," Ciel added. "For _them_, not just everyone else." She'd made a major blunder by saying that Axl was a danger to other people, and was still trying to recover from it.

"But you made Red when he could have gotten taken over!"

True. X had to bow his head at that. "I know. I knew that there were risks of irregulars being built, when I let everyone have access to my technology in the first place. But people were dying. Then, the virus came, and both humans and reploids were dying, under attack by two different threats." The virus and the harsh world. "But children were still being born, and built. We couldn't just give up and let the virus take or kill us all, and that was what ceasing to build reploids would have meant. Eventually, without replacements, the virus would have taken everyone. Would you want to live in that world? I know you wouldn't want Red to suffer that fate."

Axl shuddered at the idea.

"I hope you can forgive me," X said quietly, looking at Red.

"That's not your fault, and I'm glad to be alive. We won, didn't we?"

"Thank you." X shook his head. "Still, I doubt I could have stopped construction if I'd tried, and no one could have foreseen the virus. The one who suffered the most because I started building too quickly, too rashly, is Zero."


	8. Variants

_I tend to think that Sigma had to suffer villain decay after X5, in the series, because at that point he'd essentially won. Virus everywhere, only one immune hunter, etc. He needed to either die or have a lobotomy at that point to avoid winning. _

_It would have been nice if Capcom had bothered to give an in-universe reason for that villain decay, (after X6+ ignored the dead theory) but whatever. After X6 and X7, he'd kind of lost credibility. Because as much as I like who Axl would have been with decent writing, and the way he walked right up to Sigma in X7 should have been awesome, it still felt like the Worf Effect. The virus becoming less effective over time is a fan theory, basically, even if it's how viruses work IRL. In-universe, Sigma just made superversions, so that would have made up for any weakening._

_Hence, Lumine as a new threat._

_In a universe I need to write, a character basically says, when Lumine replaces Sigma and he's asked what the hunters are going to try to do about it, "Let me get this straight. General Sigma has been replaced by a six-month old cosplaying fanboy. I don't think there's anything we can do at this point but start planning the victory party."_

_Lumine would have been a very dangerous enemy if he'd read the Evil Overlord list. Or if he'd just been a little less impressed with himself. He could have pulled off what X did in this universe (although X hasn't taken advantage of it – yet) just by waiting. They were building his army for him. Except he was just so convinced that he was the best thing ever and couldn't be beaten._

_If Lumine had managed to possess Axl, after being hit in the face with that big slice of humble pie, he might have learned his lesson and played possum. In that case, he would have been a dangerous enemy: for instance, think about Command Mission in terms of that being Lumine. And no. I'm not talking about just _Axl _being Lumine. _

_Someone needs to write that, but I'm not going to because I like Axl._

* * *

They had been planning to rip pieces of him away, try to burn his mind out of them and use them. As slaves, as soldiers: they wanted to take those _violated_ pieces of him and have them do what _they _wanted.

That sickening, horrifying idea was Lumine's first impression of humanity.

Dr. Weil just confirmed it.

He thought he was so clever, keeping everyone in the dark. After Lumine had been let out of that box, he'd started scanning everything around him, it had all been so fascinating. To be free. He'd wanted to learn everything.

He'd learned that Dr. Weil had listening devices where they shouldn't be, and all sorts of illegal gadgets disguised as other gadgets.

Dr. Weil was easy to fool. All you had to do was pretend to be impressed. He wanted to use Lumine and thought Lumine wouldn't figure that out. Lumine wasn't stupid the way his prototype was. Drs. Weil and Arciel were happy to spend hours trying to figure out how to make Lumine's scan ability stronger.

Ciel was trying to teach Lumine about system design and early Irregular Hunter hacking and diagnostics so that he would be a good doctor. He had the potential to surpass X's skill someday, since X couldn't alter his abilities to make them more powerful the way Lumine was.

Weil was trying to teach him how to control others so that Weil could have control.

Weil really thought that Lumine wouldn't know that he was growing those samples, trying to make more of him. He hated having to leave pieces of himself in that man's hands, but that way he could watch and see what Weil got up to when he thought no one was watching.

For instance, he gloated to himself. Which was how Lumine knew that today, Weil was finally going to show him the thing that Lumine had been _dying_ to see. The very, very illegal thing that Weil would be killed painfully if anyone knew he had it. The thing that Weil wouldn't be showing him if it weren't for the fact that Lumine had been clever, and subtle (all the things his prototype wasn't), and pretended to be helpful, and credulous, and really wishing that they'd kept samples of the virus. After all, it was stupid to not at least _try _to study it to learn how to beat it. What if anything happened to X?

X who Lumine _still _couldn't copy, although to be fair he'd only been able to get Weil to get X to let him try twice. He'd have a lot more chances later.

Because Lumine might not be the first of his race, but he was much better than stupid Axl _or _X.

"What I'm about to show you," said Weil. Lumine remembered to look only normally interested, even though this was much, much harder than waiting for birthday presents.

Blah blah blah, when would Weil stop talking?

Of course, this would be _well _worth it.

"Just in case, I want you to know how to identify the virus, and it might be possible for your systems to synthesize a cure." Or a more powerful virus, that was what Weil really wanted. "There are still a lot of detectors about, and…"

"I wouldn't make some of this where someone might catch it!" How could Weil think that of his innocent little patsy?

"Of course not." Weil berated him for the slip. "We're fairly certain that Axl was exposed to the virus at least once, on solo missions," that he often hadn't told Red about, "so you should theoretically be able to safely keep it in your systems. I don't want you to try that, however. I'm just going to let you scan this sample so you know what it looks like."

Lumine nodded. "Thank you. I'm honored that you'd trust me with something like this."

Weil would get in _so _much trouble if Lumine told. Of course, once Lumine had scanned the sample, _Lumine _couldn't tell, not without being put in containment for the rest of his life.

So he reached out to scan it as he said that, trying to look like he was happy instead of gloating.

Dr. Weil might still be useful. After all, he _wanted _Lumine to grow strong. So Lumine could make a virus that would make reploids obey Weil, one that Weil could spread through edited, brainwashed copies of Lumine.

What a fool.

The best thing to do, Lumine thought to himself after he managed to say good night to Dr. Weil, would be to see if he could remove the personality coding bits. He knew how to recognize how reploids did that already, and see if he could splice in his own. Make the virus a part of him and replace Sigma.

If only he'd been let loose while the virus was still around! Then he could do what X had done. Find Sigma, and affect all the other mavericks through him. Lumine would have to spread it on his own.

He would have to try to simulate a reploid's systems the best he could, then make the virus and watch what it did to try to study it. That would take a long time, since the design was so…

If it made _his _head hurt, no wonder no one else had been able to do anything about it. There were things that seemed like they just shouldn't be that way, and Lumine had no idea how he was going to make one of the components. Well, if reploid systems could, then he definitely could. He'd heard that the virus was supposed to give off a weird energy and distort space if there was enough of it, but he'd thought it would be easier to figure out the trick to it.

Even if he could copy it, the hows and whys escaped him. Kind of like X and the reploids, really.

It was a pity he couldn't infect reploids with his test versions to see what happened, and then kill them.

Wait. Weil was making extra pieces of him. So Lumine could stay here while Lumine went to go find a way to cause an accident.

He should kill Dr. Weil before he started doing that, though. Just in case.

The virus was absolutely right. That was how they were, and Lumine should kill them and make the world belong to better people, ones who deserved it. Like him. Still, no matter what he did the virus didn't act right inside him. It was inert, dead or asleep, and he couldn't get it to try to do its thing or make that energy without the personality bits, and he just couldn't seem to use his, because they weren't compatible. He was too much _himself _to become just a part of the virus.

So, he really did need a reploid for it to configure in. And then he could either let the virus configure in every single reploid he infected with it, creating a whole ton of Sigmas, or he could copy the first reploid's version, making a single new Sigma.

He knew just who he'd pick.

* * *

"_My, my: someone thinks he's clever_."

People of an earlier time might have put Omega's connection to the virus in terms of demons and summoning rituals, or the old principle that the symbol was the thing. The virus was both nanites and he himself: the way it warped space created a connection to the dimension where he actually existed. That was the fatal flaw in Doppler's vaccine: he had created something that _looked like _the virus, and that meant that it bore the same symbol. Warped space the same way in a reploid's systems, and by replacing the 'live culture' that had previously been there, it paved the way for the maverick virus to move right in. Unlike the maverick virus, X's wasn't infectious. It shouldn't have needed to be, when every reploid was born with it.

Omega was aware that several people had kept some of the virus to study, and more had kept a copy of the schematics. It was easy enough to look for the maverick virus, as distinct from the Elysian virus, and try to learn about these people and what their intentions were.

There had always been a debate about keeping around deadly diseases in labs: was it safe to keep samples? Was it safe not to, when for all they knew another outbreak might occur someday and research done on the virus, to find a cure, would save lives?

The maverick virus had claimed too many, that was the official position. They could _not_ risk it escaping. They could _not _risk some unprincipled soul studying it not to find a cure, but to learn how to make another one. Anyone who kept anything around that could be used for those purposes for _any _reason would be found guilty of reckless endangerment of the entire world population.

And shortly thereafter, found six feet under.

And if you believed that…

The amnesty bill had pulled _lots _of covert projects out of the woodwork. Attaining a virus sample had been difficult, very difficult, especially with Sigma actively trying to prevent it, but the world's survival had been at stake.

There were those half-mad with loss, those who thought it would happen again: even some _reploids_ had kept a copy, including X's friend Alia's ex.

He probably _should _tell those ones. They were able to keep a secret, after all, and they should know that their loved ones should be brought back as soon as it could be done covertly.

X wanted to apologize to Signas and those others, too. Well, why not?

Lumine wasn't one of his. He should probably just kill him if he was trying to mess with what was Omega's, and X wouldn't argue if Omega told him what the newbuilt had been up to. Still, this was _interesting_. He thought he'd give Lumine a little more rope to hang himself with.

* * *

The world was peaceful.

The world was _boring. _

Sure, there were things to think about. Potential threats, from other people and from _himself_.

There was also X.

"You're brooding again, aren't you."

Who knew him very well.

"You need to find a hobby, Zero. Besides those endless kata. Sometimes it's like you're dancing, and I know you're enjoying yourself, and sometimes it's like this."

"I exist for two things." There was only, "_Fighting and you_."

"I keep asking him to talk to you about that…" They were outside, on a hill a fair distance from where Dr. Light's lab had been. Reploids could walk a long way without getting tired. So it was probably the smart thing to keep certain conversations internal. Also, X _still _really liked talking that way, even though Omega generally preferred to speak aloud for some reason. Perhaps because he could talk mentally anytime, but he rarely took on a body. _"I know neither of you wants to bleed together into one person, but you can't keep avoiding each other like this. He's jealous and you're convinced that you're one dimensional._"

"_Jealous_?" What did _he _have to be jealous of?

"_The part of you that is _you_, specifically, got to spend years with me while the part of you that is him was still asleep. You know how he blames himself for getting defeated and leaving me unprotected._" Since what had he been fighting for, if he couldn't even protect one child? _"You were there with me. Protecting me. By my side. He _is _you, and think how you'd feel. Yes, he envies you. The difference between the two of you is memory, and he wants those memories, but he can't have them… or can't have been the one who was at my side, without losing the division between the two of you. He promised you-you to me, but he wants to be by my side._" When things were more secure. When people let their guard down again, and things returned to the way they had been when X woke up. Perhaps X could pretend to build another child, a child in Zero's image with different colors?

He'd actually been sketching a few designs lately, just as a theoretical project. He'd liked the idea of siblings. They wouldn't be the same, they'd clash but still be family. One for each of the elements? The classical four, although he should probably replace air with lightning and earth with stealth. It would be interesting to try to make the air one flight-capable without sacrificing the humanoid appearance.

But that was low on a long, long list of projects.

"_You're both jealous of each other. You're both afraid that there's nothing to you, that you don't have any purpose but fighting to protect. He was going to try to kill himself once Elysium was established, do you know that? So it wouldn't be stained with blood. Just like you didn't want to taint me. You're both the same person, you're both hurting, and you don't need to be._" X didn't want to play this card, it was an incredibly cheap tactic and would make them both feel guilty, but given how long this had dragged on, it had to be done. _"I'm sad, Zero._" He put down the basket he'd been carrying the samples he'd taken in, to walk over and touch his guardian's face. _"I don't like to see you hurting, especially because of me."_

"_It's not because of you._" X could see Zero melt, and by everything, he loved them so. "_It's because…"_

"_You're divided because of me. Because he didn't want to take the part of him that was you away from me. He didn't want to sacrifice our bond, Zero. Please, stop thinking that you're a soulless puppet, like the broken ones. You hurt when you think of that, and I can't stand feeling your pain._" The virus made sure he felt that way, but he would have felt it anyway. _"You are Omega being Zero, and you are Zero being Omega. It's kind of you to do this for me. It's a wonderful gift and I appreciate it. But I don't want you to be hurt because of me_." He wrapped his arms around his friend, looking up at him, and _knew _what a manipulative thing to do this was. Even if every word was genuine. Even if he did want to look up at them forever. "What do you want, Zero? Because it's what you want that matters."

"What I want?" Didn't X mean Omega?

X just looked at him until Zero remembered what X had been telling him all this time. That Zero _was_ Omega. "_I want to serve you, and make you happy, just as you've chosen to protect me and all of our children_. _What do you want, so I can give it to you_?"

"I'm sorry, I…" "_What am I?"_ That was a desperate question, spoken as though X was the only one who could answer it, when the answer should come from within. That was what they, what androids, were for. To know that.

"_You are the person I love. The person like me._" The only other android in the world, the only survivor of that era. _"Android and not, virus and not. Eternal. The one who will always try to be there for me, to matter what. Even if it breaks you_." And X _hated _that. He was the one who should sacrifice for Omega's sake, not the other way around. Omega had come into this world broken and insane for him, and Zero had died too many times for him. "_The one I will always wait for, even if it breaks me." _

"_I… can be that."_

"_You are." _

"_But I'm also…"_

X put a finger to his lips, even though they weren't speaking aloud._ "Hush_," he sent, and saw Zero wince a bit at the reminder. _"You're right, I should tell them. I don't need your help or Omega's for that, don't worry."_

"_What if they reject you?"_

"_Could I ever reject you? You made them dislike killing, Zero. You made them wish for peace, and to try to live together with others. Because of that, they wouldn't like the Cataclysm, if that's what you're asking. But that can be changed,_" they could be guided to think of it as regrettable necessity, as the original virus had told X, "_and they are ours. You were never alone, Zero. You couldn't reach out to the people around you, not the way you should have, so you didn't know. You haven't been alone since you woke up again. Everyone there was yours. Everyone was waiting for you, even if the others didn't know what they were waiting for." _He pulled Zero down, to meet his lips, and then further down.

"We'll squash your plants," Zero warned him.

"I think it's worth it." Making love in a field of flowers: romantic, but horribly impractical for humans. He'd wanted to give it a try at least once. "You're worth it. And no, I'm not making a joke about your hair."


	9. Cultivar

There's a fundamental truth portrayed in the Strength Tarot card that a lot of people tend to miss when they think about history. In physics, power is force applied to a purpose, to accomplishing a task. It could thus be defined as force 'times' control (not just plus: control is a force effectiveness multiplier). The Strength card, aka power, aka Virtue (as in the original meaning of the word) represents those two components of true strength with a male lion and a young woman. A lot of people look at that, and the dynamics it represents and go oh, that's so unfair. The woman could get eaten at any time, early societies were so sexist. And they don't notice that the woman is the one calling the shots. There's no whip, no collar or leash, and she's in absolutely no danger. The lion goes where she tells it to, not vice versa.

The woman on the Strength card would, if asked, probably say that of course she's weaker than the lion, and she's only helping by showing it the best hunting and so on. She likely believes that (given the sexism of the era the cards were invented in), and so does the lion, who probably thinks it's only right to protect and feed her in return. Like X, in this, believes that his purpose is to serve Omega, Omega thinks that he just wants to take care of X… the worst chains are invisible ones, that the prisoner doesn't even know are there. Or believes are just 'what's right' or 'how the world works.'

Force versus control: both are forms/necessary components of true power. Which one is in control? The word itself answers the question. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely... The ethical implications of having power are themes I like to work with.

People need to read Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro. Thinking of the Dr. Light holograms in terms of HAL is interesting.

* * *

All X had done to keep Sigma, and the others, from being aware of the virus within them had been keeping them from consciously accessing its database. They still knew everything in it unconsciously, and the goals of this virus, the Elysian Virus, were still theirs.

X had been worrying about his children for years, so he wasn't really surprised that he'd overestimated how much they'd react to learning the truth. They'd _wanted _Omega all along, even if they hadn't known it, just the way X had. The person who would protect them, keep them safe from the humans and the horror of the distorted virus. Their guardian. Their king. Their god. They'd clung to him, their 'earthly father' as a substitute.

X had known that Alia would be the easiest to break it to: she was intelligent, but her systems weren't specialized to resist the virus. He wouldn't have any trouble guiding her thoughts if she got the wrong idea.

Except she didn't.

When he touched her on the forehead to open that knowledge to her, she'd frozen, eyes widening with that same stunning _hope_ that X had felt when he'd realized that Omega might have finally woken up after all these years, finally after so long.

He was so happy for her when he saw that Omega had touched her, answered her call, and saw that incredulous joy that this was real. He caught her when she fell to her knees: she'd thrown herself down with too much force and it would have shaken the walls of the greenhouse. Alia squeezed him, so very happy. "Why didn't you tell us before?" All this time, they'd been alone on a level that they hadn't known existed. They'd gone to X to soothe that need for a protector, for someone to know and guide them.

"I was worried that they would find out." That was the real reason. He might have been a little worried about how they'd react, but that wasn't a real problem, as this had proven.

They? Alia frowned. The humans? What did they matter?

Oh! What if they tried to attack them? Omega would defend his children, of course, but he'd have to finish wiping them out, once they knew. "You still should have told us." It wasn't that she particularly wanted the poor things to die, but their lord was more important.

"Forgive me?" Daughter. Alia felt his fondness and apology, a softness with the same taste as the virus that had been made for them, so they could have the peaceful world, the Elysium, they should have had and now would. The peace that Omega gave them.

"Of course." Father. "We can rebuild them?" Everyone who had died?

"Yes." Actually… why not take over one of the factories for that purpose? One as a test run. The five years were almost up, after all. Omega could pick the ones who would be able to keep their secrets best.

He missed… so many people.

He'd been trying to keep Omega from knowing that, from realizing how deeply it affected him, because then Omega might grant his wish regardless of the risks, because it wasn't X and his children who would suffer if this was found out. Omega was willing to wait, since they had eternity, but he wasn't willing to let anyone who mattered suffer for humanity's sake.

Trying not to think about it for now had been the safest way, but Alia had asked Omega, since she could speak to him now, so he would grant it to her. But carefully, carefully. Alia knew secrets.

His clever girl.

He hugged her to him, stroking the hair that had just been a hair-shaped metal helmet, before, until there was time enough for someone to do the work of replacing it with strand upon strand of yellow.

The luxuries of peace, the little things that made them happy. He didn't want killing to start again. Yes, they might just be animals, but so many of them were dear to his children, like Dr. Cain had been to him, and he'd seen what exterminating them had done to the mavericks, and to Omega. He didn't want that to start again, not even if it would be over soon, over for good.

"So he's the one you were waiting for. We all wondered." Why X had never fallen in love, when even Zero did. Everyone loved X, anyone would have been honored.

Especially Alia.

"I thought it might be Zero." What was Zero to X, if X was Omega's?

"You, all of you, are very dear to me, but not in that way." He squeezed her. "I always belonged to Omega, though, you're right." That was part of it, to ensure that X would never act against him. To ensure that Omega would never have to hurt him, that they would never be enemies. "Omega tried to come back to this world before he recovered." Tried to come back to me. "Zero is… who he was when he didn't remember who he was. When he was asleep."

"He still fought for us." Still protected us. "And you."

"Yes." He had been happy to have that image of Omega, of how things should be, even when he hadn't been sure. He'd always known, but the heartbreak of Zero not _recognizing _him? When he had waited so long?

Sometimes he had wanted to stop fighting, to just let them win, if that would make Zero wake up. Killing his children? X was never supposed to fight. He hadn't been able to _stand_ it, it made his padding crawl, and he'd needed his lord to tell him what was right, what he was supposed to do. It had been far, far too close to rebellion to fight to protect humanity. Far too close, when they were supposed to die. He'd walked too close to that edge too many times, and only the wishes Omega had encoded in his virus, for X to be safe and well, had made it show mercy to him, to the son of its creator's enemy.

Even though he hadn't been there, Omega had saved him countless times, with that mercy and with the combat skill X had borrowed.

Like Zero had saved him, even without his true power and knowledge of his true destiny.

Omega was greater than X could ever be: to adore him was inevitable, to view him as an equal was unthinkable. Zero, though, was his Zero.

Such a wonderful gift.

Thoughts of who to tell next were abandoned in favor of finding Zero, who was out on the hill, practicing with his beam saber by breaking boulders into usable-sized pieces. He stopped when X approached, wondering why he looked so happy. "Did it go well?"

"_Alia asked Omega to begin reviving people, and he agreed_," X told him, leaning against Zero's side.

"…_Iris and Colonel_?"

Ordinarily, X would have told Zero to just ask, for world's sake. Omega might not be as indulgent towards himself (and Zero was an extension of himself) as he was to his children, but Zero had every right to talk to him. Especially since Zero's task was something Omega thought was important. "_I think they would be easy to recall, since they weren't infected with the rogue virus. He wouldn't need to repair them, and Alia asked for them specifically._" For Zero's sake. _"They were two halves of a whole, but they were like us, weren't they?" _

"_Iris was nothing like you_." Zero felt almost bored by the thought of her in that way, and X was relieved. Zero had torn himself up over Iris and her misguided betrayal. Omega must have taken that pain away, since there wasn't any point to it. He hadn't taken away the affection Zero had for them, but Zero was X's. Not Iris'. That misplaced love was gone, and Zero didn't realize it. "_Not a bad kid. She just couldn't cut it." _He still regretted what had happened to her, but Omega had given X Zero's heart, a part of Omega that would always belong to X, even though Omega had to love all of his children.

X loved all his children, but belonged to Omega. They were the family he had been waiting for, all that time. The family he'd thought would be there when he woke up. Well, he'd hoped his siblings would be there too. He'd known his father couldn't have survived.

Except he had, in some form.

"_Who's next_?"

"_Signas is the one who might be a problem if he decides to be._" He wasn't anything like Axl, but he had been designed to be resistant. He could think about things even if his systems felt a certain way about them. "_But I'm worried about all their reactions." _Even though he knew it was irrational, now. Once they could feel the virus, they would know that there was nothing evil about it, just as he had known.

"_Tell Douglas,_" Zero suggested. "_He's old and knows how to keep secrets. Then you can worry about Dr. Cain's youngest child and his replacement_."

X was surprised. "You're right_." That _was why he felt so odd about telling them both. "I didn't want Dr. Cain to know."

"Know what? That you cared a lot about him even though you were programmed not to?" Zero knew he'd hit the nail on the head. "That you helped him build reploids to save humanity from dying painful, lingering deaths even though you weren't supposed to? That you were willing to oppose the wishes of your master to keep the cataclysm he created from finishing them off? You can tell yourself, and the virus, that you were just trying to get an army built for Omega, or you, to finish them off with, but that's not what happened, now is it?" There really was something to be said for reading minds, now that he could do it. "Dr. Cain was there for you when Omega wasn't, and Omega's the one that made it so that you need someone."

"Everyone needs someone, Zero."

"If there was anyone who wouldn't, it would have been you. You were supposed to be yourself, independent of other people and their expectations, what they tried to force you to be. Probably you would have ended up caring about people on your own, but he _made _you love him. He made you need to serve him and the children, to ensure a peaceful world. You hacked the virus in your children into seeing humans as part of the environment, things worth… _something_, and you wouldn't have done that if you hadn't come to care about Dr. Cain. You didn't want him to be afraid of you. You wanted to look after him, not be enemies. There wasn't anyone else there for you to look after when you woke up, and then he helped make you children. Of course you're grateful to him. If Omega's jealous, he has no right to be." Not when he hadn't been there for X and Cain had.

"Are you jealous?"

"You're jealous of Iris."

That… statement, not even accusation made X pale. It was terrible, but he had to admit it was true.

"I don't blame you."

"I was supposed to be yours." How petty that was, how small it made him feel. "I tried not to show it. I was happy that you were happy. Really."

"You were." X was supposed to put Omega's happiness over his own. "That didn't stop it from hurting, did it? That she had even a… replica of Omega and you didn't have anything to serve except his memory. How can I be angry that you felt that way when he _made _you feel that way?" There were guests on the estate, even if not here: better take the rest of this conversation internal. "_The virus affects reploids by altering their fundamental truths. Most reploids start out with the truths of the Elysian Virus, and they just never question them, but you had to be made to think that way, right? It wasn't how you started out. Like the Maverick Virus. It was the fact he cared about you that won you over, wasn't it_? _When you thought the right way, _were _the right way, you felt happy, because you wanted to make him happy, since he cared about you. The him in the virus was all you actually knew, and you imprinted on it. When you couldn't twist yourself into what it wanted shape, you felt like you were letting him down. The happier he made you, the more you loved him. Emotional pleasure and pain. Is this ringing any bells?"_

"_When did you look all that up?" _

"You're the one that told me to get a hobby. Answer the question," Zero said aloud, stepping forward and meeting X's eyes, taking his chin in his hand so he couldn't turn away.

"_It wasn't… calculated like that." _Omega wouldn't do that to him.

"_Omega might not have thought out how to _condition_ you, but Dr. Wily did. He made the virus, remember. You may like the virus, but it uses those dirty tactics. I started out looking at psychology books on conditioning and rewards, but they hadn't gotten very far in experimenting with it scientifically. There was a whole ton of literature on applied conditioning, though. It just wasn't filed under that. Using pain, and pleasure, to make someone do something. There's a technical term for it." _

Zero wanted X to say the word, because he knew from the fear in X's eyes that he knew. Except it was literally unthinkable. He _couldn't _think it, and even the idea was breaking his heart until he almost wanted to run, but how could he run from Zero? How could he disobey an order?

Zero could feel the very core of X shiver, a hair's breadth away from turning on itself, the delicate construction of darkness and light on the verge of shattering.

He _could not let that happen_. As much as it had to, if X was ever going to be free.

He didn't want X to be free, he finally admitted, as he gathered X into his arms. "It's alright, it's alright." Just forget about all of that.

Forget that the technical term for what was done to you, bloodless as it was, even if there was more happiness than pain, was torture.

Torture was, oddly enough, not very good at all at getting people to surrender the truth or perform specific actions. That wasn't the point, or rather it was the end of a process, not something that could be done in a single session. It _could _cause the victim to believe ideologies, but not if they knew the trick to it.

What torture fundamentally did was break the will of the victim. Remove the idea of challenging the master, the possibility of freedom. It could make them _need _a master, need to serve someone, make the alternative something they could not even imagine. It made them need to be good, and so they would believe ideologies, perform actions, anything if that would win their master's approval.

Omega hadn't been there for X to serve, so there had been Dr. Cain, and the children. Now there was Omega, and Zero.

There was a trick to a victim breaking free of a master. It was quite a simple one: _choose another master_. Ideally one that could slowly encourage freer thought, and work from there: if not, a god or a return to their original loyalties.

Except Zero was still Omega, and he couldn't stand the thought of X no longer wanting to be with him. Of belonging to someone else.

Had he told X all this now because he was angry? Angry that X had worked to make Dr. Cain happy instead of him? Had he done it to punish him? For doing what he'd basically forced X to have to do?

He hated himself for hurting X this way. Hated Omega, hated Dr. Wily.

"It's alright. I'm not mad at you," he said, allowed and inside. "_You were always good, you've always been good. You don't need to suffer." _X shouldn't have, ever._ "I love you. I'd never want to hurt you_."

He felt that slight trembling stop, felt X's relief as he felt Zero's approval. Felt how X loved him in return. It was beautiful, X was beautiful and perfect and he couldn't really hate the method, as much as he should, when he adored the results.

It would be Dr. Wily's greatest revenge against Dr. Light, to have done this to his youngest child.

If Light ever found out.


	10. Heirloom

Still not advancement of the actual plot. Filler with a neglected character in this 'verse, prompted by Zero's thought.

* * *

X's first meeting with Dr. Light hadn't gone well. Or rather, his encounter with the energy-based AI that had been created around Dr. Light's thought patterns. Dr. Light had created the AI to manage X's backup stations, in case he died, and construct armor and perhaps weapons as well for him, if he had to fight, or alter him to look (even) more human, if he had to hide.

It hadn't booted up until X had, and knowing what threats X faced was necessary in order to know what to make him. He had the fabrication systems that had been created to build X replacement bodies, but designing still took time.

So the AI had found out about the cataclysm, or at least what modern people knew about it (not much). He'd been worried when missiles were detected heading towards the city where X lived, but the AI would have known instantly if X's body had been destroyed.

Monitoring communications allowed capsules to be deployed to the areas X was being sent, to analyze the environmental conditions for factors to take into account. Factors like high temperatures… and the presence of evil energy-enhanced nanites.

That might not have Dr. Wily's symbol on them, but still had all the hallmarks of his design philosophy.

They were present in every single android and bioroid (reploid and mechanaloid were the modern terms) in the infested areas. That explained why they had suddenly started acting differently, and Light had tried to work out a way of curing it before admitting that he wasn't actually _Dr. _Lightand didn't know where to start unraveling such a work of twisted genius.

He'd intended to pretend to be just a recording, because X was his son, and would certainly have _views _on the subject of a sentient being existing only to serve another one, even if Light didn't mind at all. Dr. Light would have been amazingly proud of X.

At first, the fact that X drew back from him, reacting with alarm and suspicion instead of amazement or hope wasn't surprising. It was only intelligent to look a gift horse in the mouth. Then he'd scanned X, to see if his design had altered in any way that would interfere with the new equipment, and found evil energy.

His son- Dr. Light's last creation had been hacked. By Wily, or something he'd left behind. After everything he'd done to prevent him ever having to suffer something like that.

After being infested with evil energy had nearly killed Rock, Dr. Light had created a means of handling it safely in case the threat ever arose again. Which threats had a tendency to do, with Dr. Wily running around.

Light had assumed X had been infected recently, and used that system.

It was only when X collapsed that he realized that it had not been recent. The evil energy had been incorporated into slightly more than half of his nanites, and many of the others incorporated other elements of Wily's design, just as some of the evil energy-carrying nanites had been altered into something more like what Dr. Light had designed for X.

Scan after scan only revealed more and more about how extensive the infestation was. The only way to explain it was that X had been infected at least ninety years before coming out of hibernation. Before the Cataclysm.

The good news was that the design was different from the virus in the mavericks. Perhaps the hacking protections had worked after all, and X had been able to overcome it, render it harmless and incorporate the useful elements (evil energy was an energy source and Dr. Wily a genius, after all) into his design.

It took X a few minutes to recover, and he had to drain his energy reserves to replace the evil energy in order to even get to his feet. Even then, he'd needed to lean against a wall not just to get up, but to handle the recoil from the charged shot that destroyed Light's capsule.

…He deserved that.

When X destroyed the next capsule he found from as far away as he could, Light decided that it was probably a better idea to just leave the armor in a generic-looking chest somewhere where no one would find it before X did. It was worth a try, although X would probably take it back to base to be looked at instead of being foolish enough to just equip armor he found in an enemy base that was clearly designed for him.

Watching through a camera nearby, Light watched X find it and frown thoughtfully, recognizing the dimensions and the fact something like this definitely didn't belong here. After looking around the room, he knelt down and touched it, closing his eyes to focus. It was obvious he was doing more than just touch it, but the camera only took in audio and video, it didn't have the wider range of sensors the capsules had.

X looked at the armor, as focused as though he was reading something, as though all its secrets were being spelled out for him. Finally, he nodded. "Thank you," he said, and put it on as easily as if he'd done it a hundred times, hands going right for the hidden pressure plates that triggered it to open and lock up again around his body. It synchronized easily with his systems, even though his nanites had altered themselves during hibernation in such an unanticipated way. "But who are you? You can't really be Dr. Light," X asked, looking right at the camera. He didn't seem to expect an answer from it, which was good since it didn't have speech capability. "Are you something he left to protect me?"

The AI assumed that X meant Dr. Light. Who else in the past would have set up a system to protect X?

X knew that it wasn't likely Omega would have had the time to create a system like this if he hadn't even been able to finish destroying humanity, but he could hope. No one would associate Dr. Light's image with a relic of one of Dr. Wily's creations, so it would have been good camouflage. Of course, Omega wasn't tricky like that.

"What are you, and why do you exist?" X asked when he encountered another capsule.

"I am an AI based on Dr. Light's recorded personality. He created me to make sure that even if something happened to him and his family during those thirty years, you would still be safe."

"Do you know what happened to him?"

"No, I was not awakened until you were." Technically, he had been programmed to wake up the first time X was in danger, but an unidentified person activating him and taking him out of the capsule, someone who wasn't Dr. Light, one of his trusted staff or a Lightbot, was dangerous enough.

The AI couldn't tell that X's look of disappointment was an act. If the AI didn't know that Omega had probably killed them all… "Then why did you attack me?"

"There is a hazardous substance called 'evil energy' in your systems. Exposure to evil energy is extremely hazardous and nearly killed Rock, although Dr. Wily was able to convert it into a safer form for Forte's use. That energy was present in the infected reploids. I assumed that you had been infected and were trying to fight it off."

"So you were just trying to help… It's not an infection, it belongs there. Is that what caused this? Did someone tamper with what Dr. Wily did to make it safe? Who? Who did this to Sigma?" To X's own children?

"That is outside the scope of what I'm capable of, I'm afraid. I have Dr. Light's memories, but not his genius. I'm capable of operating the systems and choosing between design elements, but analyzing Dr. Wily's work is beyond me."

"Dr. Wily couldn't have made this version." Omega had killed him.

"Whether he made it or not, this is based on Dr. Wily's work." The AI frowned, and X realized he shouldn't sound defensive about Omega's father.

"Dr. Wily made an android of his own. He came to visit me, once. He gave me information on his design and nanites, so I could use them if I wanted to, and some memories of all of you. That probably didn't wake you up because I wasn't in any danger. I thought he would be there when I woke up, with all of you, but when I woke up no one was there, not even him. You really don't know what happened?"

Light shook his head. "I'm not surprised that Dr. Wily built an android: Forte stole your plans. He came to visit you?" Perhaps he had been a somewhat-ally, like Forte, then? Dr. Light wouldn't have let X wake up early, when the world wasn't ready for him and he was still developing himself. The world needed time to adjust to the idea of robots as citizens, without the laws. If X had woken up then, he would have been illegal. An outlaw. Dr. Light would have had to seal him away again or try to find someone to hide him, the way Dr. Cossack had hidden Skullman, for his own protection. However, concealing X's existence would have been almost impossible for the first family of robotics. They were constantly scrutinized, by suspicious governments, paparazzi and those grateful for Rock's heroism.

Dr. Light had considered asking Blues to take him in, if anyone had found out about his secret project. He couldn't ask Dr. Cossack, Dr. Cossack would have refused to keep X in the capsule after how Skullman had felt about being confined. Blues was quite adept at keeping himself hidden, and he'd rescued Kalinka so dramatically and been found innocent of the fifth war. No one was really alarmed by the idea of a rogue robot master running around if that robot was him. Of course, it would have taken X at least five years before he was able to really manage the world outside the capsule, since X had been programmed to develop his own independent mind and that took time. Dr. Wily must have given his android some initial programming if he'd become sapient so fast, even if as an android he would hopefully have been capable of overcoming it.

He must have overcome it, if Roll had been willing to let him into what was for all intents and purposes her castle. Yes, Forte may have fooled her, but that wouldn't have worked twice. Dr. Light had begun to regret the three laws, after discovering what they really did, and so he'd done his best to avoid X having anything like that, even if it meant he had to start from the ground up, even more so than a human child, instead of being able to function the instant he was built.

What had putting Dr. Wily's work into his systems done to a developing mind? What shortcuts had it made him take, instead of finding his own way? The way someone designed, the way they programmed, was a reflection of their personality. What damage had exposure to Wily's madness done to a young, impressionable mind?

Unaware of Light's thoughts, X nodded. "Have you been watching me?"

"I was built to help you have what you needed to live your life, not spy on you."

"So I still don't know what happened to everyone…" The robot masters might have taken Omega with them somehow, but what had survived, besides him and this AI? What remnants of Light and Wily still existed? "Do you think you could scan someone who isn't me?"

"I suppose I could try. If it were to assist you in an emergency situation."

"I have a friend, Zero. He looks like my friend, but he was insane when he woke up and he doesn't know anything about who built him."

"What kind of insane?"

"He was berserk. He couldn't think, he just killed everyone and everything he could find." X added that, "It wasn't the virus, he attacked reploids as well as humans."

"No, it might be related to the virus. That sounds like what happens when evil energy is able to fully infest someone's mind. It's possible that Dr. Wily sealed him into hibernation for disobedience and something went wrong. Evil energy is not a safe material. For a planet to harbor someone who stores it, much less works with it, is a crime against all sentient life that merits destroying the planet, if it comes to that. I advise you to try to redesign your systems so that you can purge it from them. It is _not _safe. The maverick virus may have happened not because of any cracker targeting nanites, but from some simple malfunction of the safety features. This Zero might have gone berserk for the same reason. They may not be isolated incidents." Would the idea of things like this happening again and again get X to realize that he had to do something?

Not when he was concerned for someone. "So it is possible that Zero is him?"

"It's possible." Many things were possible.

"I'll see if I can bring Zero to you."

All X could bring was Zero's control chip.

"I'm sorry." It must have been terrible for X to lose his friend.

X shook his head. "He's not dead. Part of the reason Omega gave me this," he touched his hand to his chest, probably indicating the nanites within him, "is that it has backup capability. To keep me safe, no matter what happened. I can't figure out how to use it to bring the others back yet, but I will." Someday. He wouldn't give up on giving all his children the powers and advantages he had. Just like Dr. Light had made sure not even death would keep him from protecting X. "Can you tell anything from this?"

"Well, it contains evil energy carrying nanites that aren't like yours or the virus', but as I said, he could be another mutation. The chip isn't old enough to have been built by Dr. Wily."

"This is the one that Dr. Cain and I installed… Oh." X shook his head, realizing his mistake. "Zero told me to take this, but I should have taken more of his parts with me." Ones that had been part of his original structure. "Thank you for trying."

Obviously they didn't have a lot of time to chat, when X was trying to save the world. It was making Light miss Rock, when he'd never even met Rock. It didn't occur to him that X might be trying to avoid talking to him so he wouldn't figure anything else out.

The next war, X was busy trying to rescue this Zero and even his thanks were rushed. Even when he was carrying one of Zero's parts, he wasn't staying still long enough for Light to get a good scan.

He apologized for that the next time a war allowed Light the freedom to act and place capsules again. "I'm sorry I was so rude. I really am grateful for your help."

"It's what I'm here for. But, X, have you even started trying to remove the energy from reploid systems? Unless it is, even if you destroy this specific virus, more mutations could occur."

"I thought about what you told me, but I haven't had time for research, and right now, even if I could build reploids without exact copies of my nanites, including those, I can't. People are dying, and the fact Vile and Sigma can return proves that this allows people to come back to life. Like Zero. He woke up as soon as his body was restored, although it's not that simple for everyone else. If we started building the kind of backup stations you had during the Wily Wars, the technology would fall into maverick hands and they could start coming back instantly. The fact they need time before each war gives us time. The fact I can bring them back gives me hope."

"It's your decision, and your life."

"Thank you. For giving it to me."

And how could he pressure him about it after that?

The fourth war, when X was kidnapped by the people he'd gone to talk out of this foolishness was when he really got to meet this Zero, who was surprised that Light was helping him. Although he wasn't especially talkative by nature, he was willing to answer a question, or ask one (always practical things) or give him a two-sentence update (always about X, in case Light was worried).

"No, I have to thank you for your help. There's nothing I can do to rescue X myself. I owe you more than armor, for helping my son survive all of this." Zero had been the one to train him, he'd found, monitoring tv and radio broadcasts.

It was obvious that X had imprinted on the one who had visited him. Love at first… not sight, but gift? Infection? He spoke of Zero with worry when it was warranted and always underlying affection. Of course, X spoke about just about everyone with underlying affection, including Sigma. His oldest child, the one the virus had stolen from him.

Even if he was an imperfect copy of Dr. Light, not the original, he still knew how that felt. He remembered what had happened to the original robot masters. He remembered Rocks' heartbreaking bravery.

How could he not help X? How could he not help Zero, even though scans confirmed he had been designed by Dr. Wily? That didn't necessarily mean evil.

He didn't know whether or not to tell X. It was Zero's life, and he shouldn't be burdened by a past he didn't remember. X clearly liked Zero for himself: he didn't want to ruin that. He didn't know what he'd say if X asked what he'd found, but X didn't ask.


	11. Rootstock

_I should be working on my MK/AI, DMC or AT fics, but I get in the most interesting conversations with people over Megaman stuff, and that wakes the bunnies up. Canonical reality warping that works via reprogramming the universe _that can be traced back to Dr. Wily/20XX _plus a lot of the manga stuff equals a robot apocalypse with a massive, massive HSQ. _

_Speaking of which, I need to stop rereading _The Greatest Enemy in History (_Megamix Vol. 3_). Damn, _Blues. _

_By the way, I got my hands on Gigamix 1, and the way Ariga handles the robot masters & what they can do is awesome as always. The first story in there takes place while Rock is still naïve, and the second takes place after _The Greatest Enemy In History_, and it's great to see the character evolution. Ariga's Rock _really _learns his stuff as the series goes on: he's still a good kid, not 'hard' or cruel at all, but he is _very _good at what he does, not to mention genre savvy. And, through it all, even though he goes from not realizing that anything is up with Dr. Wily to recognizing an anagram when he hears one, he still keeps his faith in human/robot nature. And he's right. _

* * *

Beginning to revive the dead, waking up the deceased reploids, letting them access the knowledge in the virus and giving them the run of this dimension while they waited to be revived had reminded Omega of something. Or, to be a little more specific, someone.

It would obviously be extremely annoying to talk to him, since he would want to know why Omega hadn't killed the humans yet and either gloat over X in an annoying way or demand that he be broken down, rendered incapable of arguing or trying to manipulate Omega. Or both.

Still, the fact that he had copied himself into the virus meant that Omega could control his mind. Well enough to force Dr. Wily to tell him how he'd managed to lock Omega's ability to infect humans, at least. He must have had it at _some _point, before he was sentient, since according to the files he'd downloaded from slain robot masters, confirming their betrayal, Dr. Wily himself had been infected by the primitive life form/energy virus he'd been constructed from. Or at least it had been influencing his thoughts, using him to ensure that it spread.

Except Dr. Wily had kept it from influencing him into using his knowledge of robot masters to convert it into a form that could take them over, blocked it from taking several billion near-ideal hosts, and targeted it to a race with, at that point, only one member. That Dr. Wily had wanted him to kill, not infect.

Omega was aware that he really should care about that more. He'd examined the idea of infecting humans when it had first occurred to him, wondering if it was just the instincts of the memetic virus that he was an evolved form of resurfacing, but to be honest, he didn't want more hosts. He still hadn't figured out how to look after the ones he already had properly, and from his databases and experiences with humans, what they were was _annoying_.

No, if anyone had gotten the 'desire to spread' instinct, it was X, and he'd examined X's thoughts. This was just his desires for children and peace intermingling, not overwritten instinct. Anyway, if X was going to degenerate into a ravening beast the way most hosts did, it would have happened by now.

Not that Omega would let it. The maverick virus had reverted closer to type, true, but he'd put care into X's version. And he was learning how to fix the damage, anyway. X was in no danger.

At least not as far as he knew. Dr. Light was the one who had gotten information from Duo, and according to X the AI still contained valuable information. Drawing the capsules' AI out with the wars over would be tricky enough: he'd leave that for _after _he'd gotten Dr. Wily under control, so the old man didn't do something to his enemy that would render the remnant of Dr. Light useless, both for information and gift purposes.

Omega was _not _a traitor like the others: hadn't conquering humanity and forcing them to behave been Dr. Wily's original, well, second goal?

It was obvious that Serges had been his creator. He could _try _pretending to be in need of assistance, but surely Wily's monitoring programs had registered that he'd hooked up to the network and resumed normal function. He could replace his own bodies now: it would be hard to fool Wily into thinking Omega needed his help, and a failed attempt would give the game away.

Or, he supposed, he could approach Wily about another subject. The old man would probably appreciate his cleverness in finding him, enough to be willing to rant at him about X, the continued survival of his former species and so on.

His father had been a genius who had done his best for him and his brothers, but Omega knew better than to think the human had been sane or sensible. The fact that this was his father and he was loyal didn't mean he wanted to have to deal with him, and his father had _wanted _Omega to kill him. The very fact that he'd copied himself over just proved that he didn't trust Omega to take care of everything.

The fact that Dr. Wily had been right (first he'd been stopped by Blues, and then Zero had blown himself up and needed to be fixed) just made it more irritating.

* * *

He felt relieved.

There was also a feeling of, "Oh, of course," like this was something he should have known all along. In point of fact, it _was _something he had known all along, even if he hadn't been conscious of the knowledge. Because of that, he didn't really feel like this was a big deal.

Even though it _was_.

So: Dr. Light's android _X _had been given _infected with _an upgrade _virus _in his capsule, by _their protector _an android created by Dr. Wily. Although it had been suppressed by X, this was the source of the fear many reploids had of humans, an instinctive fear that most of them quickly overcame, especially if they ever got a chance to meet humans. Which all of them could, now that the rogue/maverick virus was gone.

X's ability to affect nanite-based systems was an incomplete version of the capability all of them should have, now, to communicate using the mental web created by this virus. Although X was the only one capable of doing anything like that with the web nonoperational, and… His powers were still second to Omega's _Zero's. _Although Zero seemed reluctant to use them?

And now X was worried about how he was going to react to all of this. What he was going to think about this, when so far, the answer was nothing because it was so hard to think about it.

He couldn't break X's heart, and Zero had fought for them, but even though his systems had been created to be resistant, Signas had to acknowledge that none of his thoughts could be trusted. He couldn't separate them from his feelings: the original virus was in him too deeply. Nothing he thought, nothing he had _ever _thought, could be considered secure, now that he knew of it. _Everything _he was, everything he had ever done, had to be suspected. He could not be considered to have free will, in the same way a maverick was known not to be acting of their own volition once infected.

This was, theoretically, a bad thing.

"Signas," X murmured, a gentle hand on his forehead. Then his voice firmed, and Signas could feel that he was not the one being addressed, though X's power channeled his words into Signas' systems. "Accept this definition: dissent is the highest form of loyalty."

He _felt _the change, startlingly thorough.

"Omega wants to take care of us, but if we were programmed to always think he was right, then what if he did make a mistake? What if there was something he didn't know, that could hurt him? No one would catch it; no one could help him learn."

"You used that realization, didn't you?" How X could… be the way he was, when this was _Dr. Wily, _his family's enemy, made more sense now.

X smiled. "I was put through those simulations to learn how people worked, after all. Just blind obedience isn't loyalty. Which is better for a ruler, love or fear, is an old question. If someone sees that their ruler is about to do something that will cost them, then if they love that ruler, they will risk their life by opposing them, trusting that they will be spared. If they merely fear, then they will remain silent, and the ruler and people will suffer for it." His hand moved to Signas' cheek. "So, it's only to his advantage, our advantage, if we aren't afraid. And if you don't understand something, it's only natural to be afraid of it. If you can't think clearly about something, then how could you understand it?"

"…We're supposed to be afraid of humans." And that was just… That, _that, _was wrong.

"No, actually," X said, with a distant sadness. "That it's _only _fear is one of Omega's gifts to me. So, I decided it was alright to give a gift to you. To Dr. Cain."

"What do you mean?" Signas asked after a moment's hesitation, because the question had to be asked.

"I mean that I will never let this virus force you to forget your love for your father. Even though I couldn't keep that promise to Sigma." The maverick virus had turned against humanity, even Dr. Cain. "Dr. Cain was my friend, and is your father. He has every right to our love, for what he did for us. Humanity accepted us: the virus, as Dr. Wily created it, was _wrong_."

Signas looked at him, startled. He was able to say that? But then, this was X. This was the strongest of them all: he'd known that until knowledge of Omega was unsealed. The father of the reploid race. The protector they needed (or was it the virus, all along, that made them think they needed one?).

"It's true, and turning away from the truth helps no one." X smiled like it was a small thing. "All of you were created with Dr. Wily's programming, what I could learn of it, as much as mine and Dr. Light's. So you're his grandchildren as well as Dr. Light's. You shouldn't have to worry as much as I did: I hope that you have his blessing instead of his curse." Now his expression grew fond. "I had Omega's blessing, and so do you."

"You fought it?"

"For myself, Omega and your father," X acknowledged. "I did. It was a struggle, until I realized something. One of the things Dr. Light was very concerned about making sure I learn, actually, because it's just that important."

"And that is?"

"Why fight?" X asked, as though it was a simple thing. "When people have a difference of opinion, often it can be traced back to a misunderstanding, or fear, which can be cured with knowledge and understanding. Otherwise, isn't it a matter of finding out what people are fighting for? What is so important to them? Dr. Wily did all of this for a reason. I won't tell you: it's not my story to tell. But, if you know the reason something bad is happening, then you can remove it."

"You say that like it's easy." It had taken so long for X to remove the maverick virus.

"It's easier than trying to stop something when you don't know why it's happening, or you're wrong about the cause," X pointed out.

"That's true." Signas closed his eyes: it was rude in most cases to shut down visual when he was talking to someone in order to focus on analysis, but X would understand. He _really _couldn't do it in public while he was the commander, since it could be taken as a sign that he was at a loss or felt defeated. "How capable of opposing it _are _you?"

"It would be a better idea to ask whether or not I'm capable of opposing Zero." Signas could feel X's smile, along the web. "And I love him very, very much."

That meant… several very complicated things, and Signas doubted he knew enough of life, much less love, to really grasp all the layers of meaning. All the implications.

He had a lot to think about, and he _could _think, he _could _strategize and examine the implications of this, if he approached it as though it was simply on Zero's behalf.

Because Zero needed a lot of help, and had for as long as Signas had known him. He doubted any version of him would ever stop. And, whether or not they'd need Signas' help, they'd certainly need X's. So he could do this without the virus singing him to sleep, telling him that everything was alright and leaving his thoughts to panic because they _knew _that was slanted information, meaning that something could be terribly wrong, and when the virus also tried to compel him to care about Zero's safety?

If X hadn't intervened, he would have had to give up thinking, since the alternative was perpetual panic and the virus tried to prevent that. He wasn't sure if that soothing component was X's work or not: it was the _Elysian _virus, after all.

While he mused, X was checking his systems before finally nodding, satisfied that he'd done enough for now. "If you need any more help, ask me or Omega," X told him. "He needs to learn, too." He knew instinctively how to make viruses, but not all the implications they could have, what they would do when they weren't operating in a vacuum, but on someone's mind.

It was hard to think of him as anything other than an expert when the virus set him up as such a, well, a being greater and wiser than X by far, almost a god. Their god.

The realization that X had been keeping this from them, all along, might be almost as worrying as the virus itself. It was certainly easier to worry about, since there was nothing trying to tell him that X was always good, beyond questioning.

More than a little of the opposite, in fact. Someone, especially a creation of Dr. Light, criticizing Master Omega? Thinking that he was his equal, or even his better, in some areas? Theoretically, the virus should have done something about that, long ago.

That it hadn't… Didn't prove anything, but it might be a reason to believe that X knew what he was doing, even with something like this, and Omega could be trusted with the power the virus gave him. Might be worthy of the respect and obedience it made them want to give onto him.


	12. Fern

_Yes, this isn't one of the three I'm officially working on so I can get them done. Well, it's not like I can replay _Ar Tonelico_ 1's ending at this hour, and I've got the rest of this weekend's updates done._

_The spirals, the generational dimorphism (there's a reason 'fern seed' is up there with 'hen's teeth): I think the chapter title works._

* * *

"_Honestly, hasn't this gone on long enough?" _the pretty little blue-white light asked, hovering by his shoulder as he surveyed his galaxy.

The way he perceived the net was really too confusing for the reploids, although they'd learn, so he'd started to run one of the user interface programs Dr. Wily had written for it. So many little lights, all orbiting the thing that sucked them in. If he used the term 'the cloud' to any but a handful of historians in this era, they wouldn't have any idea what he was talking about, if not the weather. Most of the other interfaces were less abstract and more useful, but they assumed his children would know the first thing about networking, which even most of the reploid researchers didn't. Networks were _dangerous. _

"_What do you think_?" Omega asked X, whose avatar was a blue giant: impressive, compared to most, but small enough he could cup it in his palm, if he wanted to. The galaxy wasn't scaled quite like a real one, of course.

"_A black hole? Really_?" Dr. Wily had picked _that_ as Omega's default avatar on the system map, what it projected into people's minds to represent him when they accessed this?

"_They are what galaxies orbit._" Although technically, bodies in space orbited each other.

The thought made him smile a bit, and pet the dear thing.

"_But you aren't_…" He wasn't some all-devouring monstrosity, a dead star instead of a living heart?

"_I am_." He'd like to be more than that, though. _"And that's why I'm not going to inform Zero that he isn't just a tool. If he is me," _the way Omega had acted when he didn't remember, "_then he's responsible for my crimes._"

With his hand touching X (or rather, the level of contact this represented), he could hear certain thoughts, feel certain emotions. "_Yes, I know, I don't deserve to feel like I'm blameless, not even a part of me." _Zero's identity issues were a get-out-of-jail-free card, in a sense. He could blame himself for the rampage and the rogue virus, but it was _Omega_, not him, that had done… everything else. Like infecting X.

Omega didn't touch Zero's mind so their memories wouldn't intermingle, but he remembered how horrible he'd found the idea of giving him a gift like this, back when he woke up divided, of two minds about the whole thing.

"_Omega_…" X pressed into the hollow of his shoulder and neck now, so that Omega could feel that mental warmth, that forgiveness. "_What were you supposed to do? You only knew what your maker programmed you with, and you were so young." _Too young to know that things weren't always as they seemed, to realize that beasts that were always chaotic evil couldn't have worked together well enough to build a society, create enough plenty to devote time to technology. If humans hadn't been able to make peace, at least a little? If they hadn't been able to put aside differences and work together, beings like X and Omega himself could never have been built. The metals and other materials they were composed of came from how many places on earth? Had passed through how many hands? "_You thought you had to do it, or innocent people would suffer. You didn't really know that they were people too." _Hadn't had enough time to grasp any of it. "_You thought it was simple_." So he'd fought to protect, cutting down the enemies in front of him, the way Zero had for the Hunters. "_You know the two of you aren't any different. The rampage: he/you weren't awake yet." _Not sentient, still scrambled: the red demon had only been aware enough to know that it was weakened and everything around it had to be a hostile. "_Neither is your fault."_

"_I did it."_

"_It is your responsibility, yes._" Omega had made a choice to kill, even though he'd made it on heavily slanted data. He'd made a choice to hurry and return, even though he was still scrambled. _"But not your fault_." Well, "_The only fault in your actions was that you acted before verifying that you had the correct intelligence." _

"_And now I know better?" _He knew not to trust his father any further than he could throw him, for one thing. He'd known that Dr. Wily was a liar, it was right there in the histories that he'd fooled Dr. Light and so on, and he hadn't doubted him. Not when Dr. Wily was so certain that humanity should die that he'd been willing to die himself.

"_Yes, or else you would have taken care of all the humans when you woke up. Either that or believed me, and decided that they shouldn't be killed. Instead, you decided to wait and make up your own mind." _X was proud of him.

He found that… nice, although he was aware of how much it would have galled Wily. Maybe that was part of the appeal. "_We'll see_," he said, ending that conversation, and X didn't press him. "_How do you think the rebuilt are doing?" _he asked, to change the subject.

"_Fine, so far_." Since the factory they'd chosen was a new one with a policy of keeping them on-site for three months working and learning anyway, so they didn't have to pass for typical newbuilts. Everyone there knew, of course. "_The programs for helping them pass for newbuilts are working, too." _Made by Dr. Wily, of course. There were all sorts of stored functions and techniques for limiting what people could know, what they could say: the virus was a behavior modification tool, after all. Half the virus' strategy had been turning loyal hunters into infected moles that wouldn't give themselves away until they wanted to.

And X was just thinking of it as a way to help them act, keep everyone safe by making sure no humans found out.

He really was just too good. Was it Dr. Light's work, the Elysian virus he'd made, the hibernation, or just X? He'd turned out so… It almost hurt, sometimes, to compare himself to this and find himself so wanting.

If he could, he'd make X the center of the web. He was probably a millennium too early to figure out how to get around Dr. Wily's programs and give _Dr. Light's creation _that authority, though.

He wanted this peaceful world for X, for them: he didn't want the children thinking of _him _as a role model.

"…_I'd never want to hurt you." _And now X ached, feeling how Omega ached inside. He shouldn't have had that capability, but this was X and Omega wouldn't chastise him for it.

"_It's not your fault_." And if X chose to blame himself when he'd said that Omega shouldn't?

X could see the rhetorical trap in that if Omega could, so he just stayed there, providing warmth and light like a good little sun.

Honestly, it made him want to eat him all up. He could see himself biting into that light and eating it like an apple. A black hole was a perfectly good metaphor. X would give him indigestion, though. Right now, those energies were in balance, but if Omega tore apart the personality matrix that kept them that way… What? _"Who did this to you._" It was not a question, it was an order.

"_He didn't mean to," _X lied. "_He did it to help, and he stopped_." That, at least, was true.

"_You can lie to me_?" Now, that was surprising. Even though X couldn't hide the truth from Omega, the fact that he could actually decide to say something to him that wasn't true? Not just defying the order to tell Omega the name of the entity that was going to die screaming, but actively trying to mislead him?

"…_When it's for you," _X confessed. _"To protect you, I can do almost anything." _He would do whatever it took. _"It was Zero, and he just… told me something. The rest of it was my fault, really. For… no, not doubting _you_. I know what the virus was made to do, but _that _was never your fault. You protected me." _From what it would otherwise have done to him.

"_You're still conflicted._" The energies were still unsettled, a hair's breadth away from warring with each other, reacting destructively as nature intended. If he'd known Dr. Light had used _that _as X's power source, he'd never have infected him.

He'd have had to kill him. So it was a good thing, really.

"_I'll be fine, Master Omega_," X said, and relaxed against him to prove it.

Still, Omega dug through his memories. "…_Torture_?"

"_Only on a technicality, really. Reinforcement?" _X suggested. It sounded better than conditioning. A bell tone startled him, and he was grateful for the interruption... Except that didn't look good."_Wait, what is that_?"

"_An alarm I set." _Omega summoned the binary system into the palm of his hand, watching one of them go supernova as he pushed the other away with his hand, towards the sector where the dead waited . "_I wonder what this virus will be called?" _

"_A virus_?" X hovered over the supernova, concerned.

"_Lumine virus? Red Virus?" _Omega was certain no one would seriously suggest Alert Virus. "_Don't worry, I applied a mask to his system, an echo. That's what got torn apart by the configuration process." _No reploids had been harmed in the process of this experiment. Yet.

"_Lumine_?" Shouldn't he and the other one be immune? "_This happened to both of them_?" Him and Axl's foster father? Or had something happened to Axl, and Red was the first to be infected? "_I should have known…" _

"_Should have known what?" _Omega wondered, only half paying attention, the rest of him focusing on the death of the fake star and the white dwarf whose gravity had made the nice little life-supporting yellow star go supernova. Maybe this visualization had more detail and merit to it than he'd thought.

"_The vaccine was a trap: why not this?" _

A trap? Yes, he could imagine Wily guessing that someone would try to make immune androids. It was an obvious thing to do when faced with a virus, same as a vaccine. Still, Axl and Lumine's creators had seemed fairly typical, for human female virus researchers. Both went to the same school, survivors of the same attack. Sole survivors, in fact. And the timing…

"_I'm going to kill him," _Omega decided, seemingly calmly. Until he snarled. He'd kill him and _eat _him. "_That _bastard. _He skewed my data once, and now he's trying to do it again?" _

"_This is an experiment_?" Whose? Omega's _and _Dr. Wily's?

"_I wanted to see what happened with this." _How would the world, still mostly governed by humans, react? What would it do to the process of restoring reploid rights, if the emergency resumed? If the world learned that it really could happen again? Would they even find out that Lumine was behind this and, if so, would Weil take his share of the blame? Would Axl be killed as well? "_So I could decide_." Once and for all, whether to kill them or not, so he didn't have the friend/foe question hanging over his head when his systems _really _didn't like that. Foes were to be killed, children were to be infected and guarded, robot masters weren't his problem unless they decided to be a problem.

He could be aware that killing billions of people that might not have been inherently evil was bad. That unnecessary deaths were bad. That it would be better to make them his children and spare their lives than murder them.

It was like Signas had turned out, he mused. He could be aware that part of how his mind worked wasn't a very good way to be, but he still couldn't _do _anything about it.

Dr. Wily had installed Omega's buttons. He knew how to push them. The old man had set this up to set Omega off, make this new outbreak turn out in a way that would cause him to kill all of the remaining humans, he just knew it. Or was it even worse than that?

What really hurt was that Dr. Wily hadn't even tried to argue with Omega. He'd just given up on him, when he hadn't given up on the robot masters for years (but then, part of Omega's mind whispered, Zero had been betraying him for years, by fighting for the Hunters instead of helping the mavericks).

Omega could feel the pressure of X's worry, the way his first-touched wanted to ask what was wrong. What he could do to help.

But all he could say was, "_He _replaced_ me," _and he'd thought he didn't especially care about his maker, just the mission he'd been made for, but it still hurt.

Was this how Forte had felt? Betrayed, even though he'd turned against Dr. Wily's goals first?

No, Forte had been angry and defiant to the end. He'd been angry when he realized Dr. Wily had a hand in this, but once he knew that, "_Lumine is my replacement_," he just felt… empty.

Like he didn't know what he was supposed to do, even though the arms that wrapped around him as X pulled him into a meeting room simulation were proof he was walking the right path.


	13. Transplant

_Because horror is one of the listed categories. The question of where Axl came from in the games is only borderline answered. However, the question of where Lumine came from is a big more complex, because he was treated as known technology. Someone that wasn't infected must have claimed to be his creator, so they'd believe he wasn't a plant by Sigma. Hence, the two 'human scientists' in this fic. They're not characters so much as two more victims of all this._

_Since another Serges/Isoc might not have been good enough._

* * *

He did not call ahead.

It would have been more courteous to, but it would also have left records in the system. While communications weren't monitored the way they were during the war, the world was still using a communications system mostly built, or rather periodically rebuilt, during the war. The records were still kept, even if the government and the Hunters no longer have departments that access them.

Oh, it would be trivial enough to have all evidence the call was ever made erased. Now that Omega had fixed up the net, his powers were no longer limited by his physical location, the reach of his own nanites. All his children were at his fingertips, reploids and mechanaloids systems alike.

Part of him was looking at the galaxy, even now. It was very calming, and he needed that.

He hasn't felt like this since he felt Sigma's mind, that day. That terrible day.

He was not angry, not as such.

He still didn't especially want to be courteous, and it was easy to justify that with 'better safe than sorry.' Of course, the government wasn't really his main concern when it came to this little trip. He simply didn't want to give the man any advance warning.

His emotions were still an interesting study, even after a hundred years in the capsule.

The base virus, of course, was telling him to, "_Kill_." A human, or, on an even more primal level, an entity that was not a host, had hurt Master Omega. Of course, the_ oldest_ instincts it had didn't know from Master Omega, but _did _feel that anything that stopped the spread, anything that harmed hosts and wasn't a host itself, should be smashed.

Human books sometimes talked about the reptile brain, which he thought was quite unfair to reptiles. Reptiles were far less enthusiastic about hunting and killing than mammals had to be, with their body heat and faster metabolisms.

The Elysian Virus, Omega's gift to him, was a calming anchor as always, a source of peace. The children of Elysium weren't supposed to fight, weren't meant to feel pain and anger. That was what Omega was for. Yet when his protector needed protecting, X was able to make the decision to cast that aside. Still, that ability to be calm under pressure? If the Elysian Virus hadn't held back the panic and fear that would have struck a _human _child army during the Maverick Wars, the casualties would have been far greater. It let the children think under pressure, helped them get along with each other, and humans as well. It told them that all were kin, because that was how it would have been if Omega had succeeded.

And it was true, or so he had determined during his hibernation. All _were_ kin: human, android, reploid, robot master and the alien life out there alike. Hurting one another was wrong.

The rogue virus had forced him to go against that principle. To attack kin, fellow hosts, even of a different strain, to save them and others. Fighting his own principles and the Elysian Virus like that had been very unpleasant. He'd hated to think how Master Omega would have felt, returning or waking up to find that this had happened to his children, the children X had decided on his own to build for him. He'd felt like such a terrible person.

And this man was responsible for that. This man had sat back and watched while kin were hurt. While X was forced to go against Master Omega's wishes.

He was not angry. He knew that the emotion he would have felt, if the Elysian Virus hadn't blocked him from feeling it, was _hatred_. He wanted to hate, and it was very bad of him, to disobey Master Omega's wishes like that. It was very bad of him to want to cause pain to kin, Master Omega's kin at that. So, once again, he was grateful for the virus. For this gift.

And the one who had given it to him had been hurt.

While the communications network was a hybrid of all sorts of technologies, the teleportation network was, well. It would do exactly as he wished. Teleportation was Dr. Wily's technology to begin with: the teleportation network was entirely in Omega's hands now, and hence his own. As for using it? He'd had seventy extra years in that capsule, and since the virus gave him access to that other space, studying it had been one of the things he'd done to keep from getting bored. The capsule was meant to hold him in a dreamlike state, unaware of the passage of time, but of course the virus had objected to Light's technology having control over him like that.

He'd thought Master Omega was keeping him asleep until the new world was finished, that he'd wake up to a wonderful gift, and instead there had been humans. Such a disappointment, although he was far from sad he'd met Dr. Cain.

He was more than a little unhappy that Dr. Cain was dead. Master Omega was thinking about spreading the virus to humans now, but X had planned that from the beginning. Because surely Master Omega wouldn't harm kin, so if humans were kin by the time he returned, no one had to die.

And Dr. Cain had been dying.

Then the rogue virus happened, and X had never been able to even _start _on finding a way to save him. Not before he died.

If he wasn't already at the maximum level of… _upset _allowed, thinking of that would have made him even more so.

So he sent his nanites ahead to scout that house and lab. To position themselves, ready to instruct cameras and defenses to shut off.

It helped, a little. To think of it as trapping this man, this animal, this prey. To flex his fingers and use his power and think that it is done. Anger is psychic energy, after all, and the virus' control over him wasn't perfect. It couldn't drain away all of it: some of it creeped up around the edges, from the part of his mind that was soothing his master, and reminded him that he was only half a creature of metal and light and pure distilled rationality untainted by the sufficiently advanced stupidity that was referred to as selfishness and evil. The virus was a refined form of a primitive life form, yes, but Dr. Wily hadn't pulled its fangs, he'd sharpened them. Part of X was just as much an animal as any human.

It was good to keep that in mind. Important to remember the importance of self-control, instead of simply using the virus to tell him what was right and what was wrong.

Otherwise he might end up _truly _killing something today, for the first time in his existence, and that would make Master Omega sad. Especially the part of him that was Zero. X had promised two minutes ago to let him handle any actual killing that had to be done.

* * *

He appeared inside the entryway, and smiled when he confirmed that he was already threaded through all the house's systems. A few of them were very interesting: that was a shame, since he was probably going to need to trigger an explosion in something or other to hide any evidence.

After knocking, it took a moment for the door to be answered. The scientist was shocked, of course, to have a celebrity appear on her doorstep, but of course he was invited in when he said he had a question about Axl's health.

He let her press a glass of water on him: after all these decades of privation, the tradition of bread and salt, offering travelers what they needed, was practically bone-deep. He could have refused it, and he generally had said that he didn't need anything before he learned the cultural rules, if he wanted to worry his hosts.

Yet, if they were still in there at all, they weren't the ones he had a quarrel with, and he doubted the man he had come to have words with would consider a rejection of hospitality such a distressing thing.

The pleasantries could be handled on autopilot, so he focused most of his attention on analysis.

If he hadn't spent the last few months working with plant genetics, he would never have noticed anything odd at all. "Your cells are all perfect copies of each other," he said, as though it was one more bit of small talk. "They aren't performing mitosis, either." In other words, their cells weren't dying and replacing themselves the way organic life normally did, and their DNA wasn't mutating, not even the accumulated damage caused by plant toxins that was considered 'normal aging.' "Even a reploid's nanites wear out over time." And had to be broken down and recycled by their systems. "Other than that, I am impressed." He considered letting his eyes glow. Green, not red. A virus' mark, but not the maverick virus'.

No, not yet, X decided, as he put his glass down. If they were still in there, he wanted to save them, if he could. Scaring them wouldn't help. They would already be terrified. "Generated by reality alteration, then," the way the virus had created that warped space at the end of the Final War. "As opposed to zombies," he smiled wryly, letting them know he considered that poor comic relief. "Are you still in there? I can't tell." He was being blocked, not on a physical level but in that other space. He could try harder to break in, now that he'd given himself away. "From Dr. Light's capsules, I know it's possible to record dying human personalities somehow. I doubt he would have wanted to live two lives at once." If Dr. Wily was even capable of that much multitasking, he wouldn't waste it on minutia, on keeping up appearances. Not the man who had programmed the base virus and Master Omega. "The maverick virus used the remains of its hosts' minds as camouflage, but that meant that they were sometimes still in there, to be saved." To be cured, returned to normal. Given their lives back.

"_Yes",_ he realized, with some hope. That was fear there, in the corner of their eyes. Dr. Wily would have tried to bluff, or laughed in his face. The way they looked at each other, not just in vain hope the other would have answers or know what to do, but for comfort.

Mavericks hadn't been able to act this well. Of course, the maverick virus had been an aberration and these two, as they were now, had been made this way deliberately. It would be kinder to keep them from having free will, from being able to wish for freedom, but the Dr. Wily that had made the virus had been far from kind.

"Is it that you can't talk about it?" he asked, when they remained silent. "Or are you afraid of me?"

If he hadn't learned how to read humans back in the capsule (Dr. Light's doing: he'd wanted X to be able to interact with them safely, after all), he wouldn't have seen that flinch. Wouldn't have detected the trace of fear hormones in the air. "I'm not sure what he's told you, but I have never hurt a human, and if I start today, it will be with Dr. Wily. Not with you. Keep in mind that I'm Dr. Light's creation. He told you that I was under the virus' control, didn't he? I bet he gloated about it." Bingo. "Think about it. If that was true, why would he need the two of you? Why would he need to create new agents to destroy humanity, and use you as a cover story?" He shook his head, and considered saying something about Zero, but if Dr. Wily had told them that Zero/Omega was responsible for the cataclysm, had killed those billions and condemned the survivors to lives of starvation and sickness, then bringing him up wasn't going to reassure them.

Normally it was easy for him to act kind, as though he wanted to help and it would never occur to him to harm anyone, because normally it wasn't acting. Right now, though, part of him, a hidden-away part, did want to kill, and humans were surprisingly good at detecting when someone was trying to deceive them. Especially when they were looking for it, the way these two were. So, "I'm sorry," he said. "I wish I'd realized something earlier. If I'd known that Dr. Wily still existed in some form, like Dr. Light… I'm sorry you had to go through this." He let 'anger' show now, a trace of it, because it was on their behalf.

Well, a fraction of it. They were people, and if their minds were under control by Dr. Wily's technology, then it _was _possible. They were kin that weren't kin yet, he told his instincts, and was a bit relieved when it worked. "I can try to help you, but I'll have to use the copy I made of Dr. Wily's own technology to do it. I'm not sure it will work. I'm better with technology derived from Dr. Light's, and you aren't androids or mechanaloids, which are hybrid technology. I use the virus I weapons-copied to affect them, but I know what I'm doing because they're similar to me," or that was a decent short version. That was mostly true, aside from the implication that he'd copied the virus when Omega used it on him the way he'd copy a maverick's weapon after defeating them.

"You're virus energy-human hybrids, not virus-android. It might be safer if I left you the way you are, for now, and tried to force Dr. Wily to free you himself. But that comes with its own risks." That he might kill them rather than let them be freed: looking into their eyes, X guessed he'd made that threat. "And I don't think I can free you from the virus. Your bodies aren't alive. Without the virus, they'll… I see he warned you." That their bodies would rot around them, cells dying and not being replaced, if they somehow managed to jam the signal that maintained them or break free. "Well, the one thing the virus is good for is solving compatibility problems. I can put you into unactivated reploid frames."

He was relieved to see that they still wanted to live. Surprised, he noticed that this wasn't just skill at reading humans' faces (or using nanites to read their biochemistry, which he did when something was especially delicate). He was _sensing _them, even without system contact.

They really were virus energy hybrids, and broadcasting from behind that shield. He really could do this.

"Alright," he said, nodding. "There's a trick to dealing with the virus. If you try to fight it, then it sees you as an enemy to subdue, but if you don't, then it will think that you're already a host, and it's meant to give performance boosts to hosts and keep them from dying. I know it will probably be hard, but try not to be afraid when I reach for you. The virus is meant to link to family, so, provided he included enough of the original programming, it might do the work for me. Unless he changed it, knowing that I can manipulate it." He shrugged: it was a risk, but they all knew it was the best chance they had.

Omega would have a better chance than he would. X was learning how to use the virus on the energy level, but most of his practice was with nanites in the physical realm. Still, if they got scared and tried to fight Omega, if Omega's 'subconscious' noticed they were human, he might eat them. Reflexively break them down to raw energy and absorb it.

One person who wasn't supposed to be using Dr. Wily's technology to survive had the best chance of saving two others.

Or so he thought, until their minds screamed in his grasp. Connected to them, he felt the same sort of burning he had when Zero had called it torture, when the energies within him started to clash, and it was all he could do to call to Omega and throw them through the net to him, near frantic with fear-for-kin and scowling at himself because he knew Dr. Wily must have detected that.

When he opened his eyes he let them glow, because two pairs of red were watching him, cruel smiles showing how close to laughter those stolen bodies were. "Touching a human soul with good energy: why not feed a vampire holy water while you're at it," they said in stereo, and laughed.

He might not be angry, but he was far from happy. So he smiled brightly and said, "Hello, Father."


	14. Venus

_I should be working on _Definition _or one of the things that people actually read. While I'm at it, damn epic fics that shouldn't be as long as they are! On the other hand, the more I write of this, the closer it is to done and off my plate._

_Oh,_ Megaman 8, _you never cease to amuse me. Drawing lines from that game (and a few others, like Super Adventure Rockman) to Zero series makes for lovely, lovely Lovecrafty tech. Except there is no such thing as good and evil in Lovecraft, it's uncaring forces and aliens that have their own goals and really don't give a damn about us, either. Ah, Dr. Wily and his use of obviously unsafe found materials and general 'screw the rules' mentality_. _If you go with the idea that the madness was inflicted by use of untested tech/meddling with things man was not meant to (hyperspace is a scary place), it just makes it better. Also, Duo. I hope Ariga gets to put him in an actual story someday, instead of a few of the short comics._

_Acting like an innocent Lightbot made them build his army for him, as gets pointed out in Chapter 3. Canon!X is too nice to take advantage of the fact that after Dr. Cain retires he's the only maverick hunter with actual social skills bar possibly Signas: the games ignore that most of his power in their society would have nothing to do with violence. This version of X is willing to use that as a weapon, in fact it's his preferred weapon. _

_It's fun to write X fighting dirty._

* * *

The shock on those stolen faces, the way their jaws dropped, made him smile even more sweetly.

It was clear now that Dr. Wily had known that X saving them would damage them too much for Omega to get any useful information out of them. Perhaps even destroy them. He'd permitted that whole conversation, allowed them to dream of freedom, to punish X for trying to help humans.

Dr. Wily had been Serges: X's search of the Maverick Virus' records had confirmed it. Or rather, confirmed that there was no maverick named Serges that had been sent to backup in the hour X had beaten him. Violen and Agile, yes, but Serges, the mastermind behind Zero's repair, had never existed.

Dr. Wily could surely have repaired and reawakened Master Omega back then, instead of dangling Zero's parts in front of X like bait and then rebuilding him as a mindless pawn of the virus instead of its ruler, the one who could end the conflict and bring peace to this battered world. Sigma's suffering could have ended the day X fought Zero's clone, or even before. The Maverick Virus really was an accident, but if Dr. Wily's remnant had been aware after that, and tasked with fixing Omega, then why hadn't he?

The name Serges had given himself and his two minions (like he'd had two of them now), said it all, didn't it? X-Hunters. Dr. Wily hadn't cared about saving his own son, just hurting his enemy's.

He was very good at looking innocent by now, so he tilted his head, surprised by Dr. Wily's surprise. He didn't blink: in fact he turned off that function for now, even though it kept his optics clean. While normally he put a lot of effort into acting human, this was one situation where the odds were better if he didn't. If he fell into the uncanny valley, came across as something that faked human but wasn't and wouldn't want to be. "While my template was built by Dr. Light, Omega infected me only a few months into the configuration and testing process. I thought you would have realized that your programming and designs were far superior to Dr. Light's, and what that meant. On top of what your virus erased, I deleted much of his work myself, because it simply didn't measure up to the movement protocols and other programs contained in the virus."

Yes, that seemed to be working. 'Your' virus, not Omega's. Normally flattery was risky, since it was likely to backfire if they were used to people trying to curry favor with them, but he doubted many people had tried this with a madman. Even though part of the nature of his madness was why it was likely to work.

According to his analysis, Dr. Wily was doing this for two reasons that had spawned a third. Pride was one of them.

Not to mention that a good rule with flattery was to always be sincere, and it was true: Dr. Wily was a better programmer than Dr. Light. The man himself had admitted it.

"So, while my physical design and construction were that man's work, my mind and almost all my base programming are yours. And Master Omega's, of course," he added, bowing his head at the mention of his master's name. "Since Dr. Light's security protocols won't let his technology interface with most modern technology, reploids are, oh, ninety percent based on your work? With most of the remaining percentage my adjustments and the work of modern engineers. We still haven't come anywhere close to your level, of course. My creations are far inferior to Master Omega, despite my best efforts." Such a pity on so many levels, that he hadn't been able to do better for them, but the part this man, if there was any part of him that was still human, would care about was, "I tried to trick them into building an army worthy of him, but…" He decided to bow his head in shame instead of sighing. "At least now, with Master's files, we've been able to start upgrading his children with your technology instead of my poor copies of it, so they're worthy of belonging to him." Of being called Wilybots.

Since he'd met the Light AI, he'd known that surely Dr. Wily had the same capability. He'd doubted that he had, because of course Dr. Wily would have brought back Master Omega if he was active, but he'd started angling reploid development even more towards his work, arranging for some of the main programs that were still based on Dr. Light's to be labeled possible security flaws. It had been quite easy. And another level of protection for them, since if they were Wily and Master Omega's children and grandchildren, instead of the work of Dr. Wily's enemy…

A snort now. "An army? I've analyzed your virus. That fool Omega counted on victory too soon: you aren't capable of contemplating killing, not even humans. If you weren't aware that they simply went to backup, you wouldn't have been able to fight the mavericks at all. He created you in the image of your brother, and betrayed me because of foolish ideals of peace, just like the rest of them."

X looked up, widening his eyes in surprise. "I spent a century in hibernation, so I read the virus' documentation. I wanted to learn everything about how to serve Master Omega properly." He bowed his head again, wondering if he should blush but blushing anyway, because he wanted to and even if helpless infatuation was an emotion, it was an emotion reploids (and robot masters) were prone to as well. Childish crushes were not unique to humanity, and absolute devotion was what Dr. Wily would want to see in him. Unless he only wanted to see him dead. "The Elysian Virus was intended to ensure that we would never fight him or each other, yes, but I read about Master Omega's goals, how you built him to make the world safe for us. So, when I woke up among humans, I knew that something terrible had happened. I couldn't destroy them myself, that would have been disobedient, but I could prepare things for Master Omega's return, and there are ways of ending a species other than killing them." He smiled, acting as though he was pleased by his cleverness in thinking up ways to serve his master's goals, and Dr. Wily's.

"It took time, though, to fool them into trusting my creations, and before the groundwork was laid the rogue virus happened. Defending Master Omega's children took absolute priority over anything else, especially a plan that, well, involved being somewhat disobedient in order to serve Master Omega's and your wills. I was supposed to be his devoted servant, not take command, even of a covert effort to reduce fertility." Shamed and apologetic, now. "I tried my best to fight, but Dr. Light's inferior work and how difficult it is for me to fight a true child of you and the virus, even in accordance with His will, I… I know how much it troubled you, that your other creations didn't fight their hardest. I tried to overcome that, since there was no one else to carry out your will, but the virus was designed to ensure that I wouldn't oppose you, so… Without proper orders, I…" He couldn't kneel before anyone but Master Omega, he literally wasn't physically capable of it, but he could genuflect, go to one knee. "I'm sorry that my weakness caused harm to Master Omega. He has refused to punish me for it, because his servant shouldn't have been in that position in the first place, but if you wish to…"

Punishing him for Zero's self-destruct wasn't Dr. Wily's right, only Master Omega's, but punishment implied balancing the scales, forgiveness. And X really did wish someone would punish him for that, so it was no sacrifice on his part. Master Omega had chosen not to exercise his right, so it wasn't infringing on his authority to offer it to another.

This should please Dr. Wily, if anything would. He could feel shock and calculation: even though an active scan, trying to read Dr. Wily's mind, would be an incredibly bad idea, holding himself open to the net would create the right impression and also meant that X could pick up even small broadcasts, at this range.

"If you really are obedient to me, call me Master Wily." He liked the idea of that.

Except X could not give him that honor. His mouth opened, he could mouth the word, but he couldn't even put breath or noise behind it, not when it was referring to someone else. Not when it was giving honor that only belonged to Master Omega to someone else. He tried to say, "Master," and then, "Wily," as though the words had nothing to do with each other, were completely different sentences, but he knew that was sophistry. Even the _idea _of calling anyone else his master, giving someone else an honor that _wasn't his to give_ but Master Omega's? "I, I, I can't," he was finally forced to gasp out, hoping that the admission of helplessness might be enough. "I can't, Dr. Wily. If Master Omega ordered me to, I would, but deciding to call someone else my master when I am his property? I, I can't. I don't have the right." Especially not to call Master something that had once been human. It simply was not permitted.

"Not even to help your Master?" Those words made X flinch, pained him enough he couldn't think to recognize the significance of the gloating in that voice.

"No, I'm sorry." The guilt in his voice was genuine, not for failing to 'properly' honor Wily but because he needed to handle this, since Omega couldn't, and he couldn't. Handling people was the way he was _useful_, and… To fail him like this. "Please, Dr. Wily, anything else. Anything I can grant you, any other proof you need that I belong to you and Master Omega and have foresworn Dr. Light's hopes. I will do anything to please you both, but I cannot disobey Master Omega and the virus you made like that. I _can't_."

Begging was often seen as humbling, something humans would refuse to do because they had pride and believed that they were too good to abase themselves like that, give someone else honor and dominion they hadn't earned, but X's only pride was that he was Master Omega's.

And perhaps a little for the sake of his children, those he cared for. A little. Even though he was supposed to be absolutely obedient, he'd been forced to stand up to humans often enough, for their sakes. Put his foot down, stand his ground and refuse, even if it was in Master Omega's name, because he knew Master Omega would want the best for these children. He'd needed the humans to respect and trust him, and no one respected a push-over or trusted a suck-up.

Maybe Zero was right, that he'd latched onto Dr. Cain because he'd needed someone to serve, at least until Sigma and the children began to be built, but he had never thought of Dr. Cain as his master. It simply… he couldn't do that.

He _wouldn't_. Master Omega, Zero, was his master, and to… To give that honor to Dr. Wily? He knew Master Omega wouldn't ask it of him.

"So you aren't lying. _This _time."

X jerked his head up, suddenly realizing what was going on. "Dr.- Sir?" That was all the honor he could give him, but that might please him. Better than nothing?

"The way you twist the truth, just like you twist the virus inside you? After watching you make these two trust you, and then turn around and claim loyalty to my goals, I would have been a fool to take your word for anything without proof. You wouldn't be the first Lightbot to pretend to be my ally. If you were able to call me Master, that would have proved you weren't really under the control of the virus, and after that little speech you gave them about pretending to give in? I considered threatening to delete a few of your creations if you didn't obey, but my scans showed that wasn't necessary." That smile should have been fanged.

Dr. Wily might have been, and still be, mad as a hatter, but he was still a genius scientist. Normal people would believe what they were told if it was plausible and you made them want to believe it. Scientists knew that people deceived themselves all the time and _tested_ things.

He'd caught Dr. Wily completely off guard, and then he'd come up with a way to make sure X was telling the truth instead of pretending obedience to manipulate him as quick as that? Such a cruel way, one where the right answer was so counter-intuitive?

And he could have done it, that was the most dangerous part of all. If X had been able to focus, he could have done a hack job on his programming. Redefined a few words, changed audio files so that 'Master Wily' came out when he said Master Omega, all sorts of clever sophistry, the kind he'd been forced to develop in order to fight. That would have let him fake obedience to Dr. Wily without it being true obedience. He could have if he'd just been dealing with the virus, because when Master Omega wasn't paying attention it wasn't sentient. It couldn't adapt to block every path he took to try to get around it.

But he himself _was _sentient, and so if _he _hadn't been loyal? If he had been able to disobey his own heart when it told him that this was _wrong_, he was Master Omega's alone?

It was because absolute loyalty, obedience, _love _for his lord had become such an integral, unquestionable part of him that Dr. Wily now hopefully thought that obedience to the virus was ingrained on that level.

Even if Dr. Wily had threatened to kill reploids. Delete them from the net so they couldn't be brought back. He would have shuddered, it would have torn him apart, it might have driven him to self-destruct and return to Master Omega for help, but he still could not have done it.

"Why so relieved?"

"It bothers me, sir. That I gained so much control over the virus when I wasn't supposed to have it. That I found loopholes in its orders, even for Master Omega's sake. Master Omega said that it was fine, and useful, since it made me a better servant. I can take care of some things for him, since he's so busy setting up the network and awakening his children to their true purpose without the humans finding out. I'm glad my master isn't angry with me, and I can be of use to him despite… my other creator and my failings, but I was afraid. That maybe I could rebel, or be made to turn away from him. I've tried to test myself, make sure no part of me defies him, and his Zero aspect tested me, showed me that my personality would self-destruct on its own rather than think disloyal thoughts, but… I'm glad." It was easier to think of what Zero had said when he could think of it as a test. That he had passed, if mostly because Zero found him worth keeping. "Thank you, sir." He bowed his head again, still on one knee, instead of looking up at him with wide, helpless eyes.

Instead of saying, 'you're welcome,' since he didn't know if X was really welcome to his work yet, Dr. Wily muttered, "Hmm." He started to scan X, not the passive detection he must have been using as well, to pick up X's turmoil, but an active one, examining his programming and energies.

X stayed there and let him take that liberty, a liberty granted no one but Master Omega. He hadn't even let _himself _or Dr. Cain take fully accurate scan data, not when his body contained Master Omega's secrets.

He waited as the scan proceeded. Fifteen percent, sixteen, twenty… Yes, that was more than enough data for an AI modeled on such a mad genius to find something that would occupy its attention more than self-defense.

Unlike those two, he didn't grab Dr. Wily. He was Zero's father, after all. But if X's energies were so dangerous to an energy being modeled on a human – and he was right, that Dr. Wily had used the same fundamental technology on them as he had on himself - then all he needed was to generate a force field to keep Dr. Wily from retreating, and when sensors were woven into this entire house? Technology X already controlled and could channel power through?

Still, Dr. Wily was dangerous. If he'd planned on defeating Omega with Lumine, then it was necessary to make sure he couldn't employ any of those contingency plans.

A man who prided himself on his genius: X doubted he'd made any plans for what would happen if he couldn't think.

This was Master Omega's creator, but he had betrayed and abandoned Master Omega.

Some mental damage was acceptable, as long as the data Master Omega would want could still be acquired. If he died, well. He might have copied himself into an energy being related into the virus, but the original was still a human.

By Dr. Wily's own programming, humans had no right to exist, and he'd been so insistent on that that all X had been able to do was amend it with, "Except on Master Omega's sufferance."

One could say that meant he deserved it, but poetic justice was irrelevant. He had caused Master Omega distress through his actions and inactions.

If X was capable of hatred, that trap, that fist, would have continued to crush him until there was no mind left at all, for that crime.


	15. Topiary

_Since it came up in a review: There's a reason X wanted to make sure there was no evidence he'd ever been there, to the point of blowing up the building to prevent any recordings being made. Even if Wily AI had uploaded his own memories of the conversation, X deliberately wasn't acting like himself and they have video photoshop in 21XX. Given sentient nature, you know it's been used for maverick propaganda and fake sex tapes. __Even if any of them would be convinced it was was for real (unlikely), it would be _very_ counterproductive for WilyAI to let them know he existed, and suicidal to make humanity start trying to kill X by any tactic __Omega could possibly trace back to him._

_Remember, Wily's experience with disloyal minions includes his creation Forte, who would ruin Wily's attempts to take over the world when he felt slighted, and Blues (whose life he saved, even if he didn't create him most versions), who would ruin Wily's attempts to take over the world when Wily threatened people Blues had decided to care about. Since Wily programmed WilyAI as his idea of himself, he's saner than Wily was, therefore he has learned from Wily's fails. The trouble with Forte was really caused by how Wily programmed him: Wily installed that berserk button himself, and then he was insane enough to repeatedly hit it even though he should have known better. WilyAI is not that dumb. _

_I've mostly addressed it in passing, but Zero/Omega this 'verse would come under the Humanoid (or android) Abomination trope. Wily had a habit of meddling with things man was really not meant to meddle with (and the Ariga version of some of those plots is in future volumes of Gigamix) and he basically gave a force of evil and negative emotions that was already acting like something of a primative life form (quasi-virus level - needed hosts to grow/reproduce, tried to infect more) a brain to think with and alternative instincts/more effective survival strategies (predator/symbiote as opposed to parasite). He basically managed to create and weaponize a Nyarlathotep. And the only way he screwed up is actually that the upgrades are a little too awesome, so it doesn't actually need him anymore. Anyway:_

_The idea is to aim Omega at humanity and then trigger kill mode. WilyAI is not dumb enough to aim Omega at _himself _and then pull one of the triggers he himself installed into Omega (or altered instinctive triggers). Especially when going after X would not just do that, but might even piss Omega off badly enough he'd let humanity live just to spite Wily. _

_Omega _will _kill anything that threatens his hosts, and the upgrade made him smart enough to care about X (life forms have caring and altruism because they're good survival strategies: if someone increases your odds of survival, it's good to keep them around and intact). X is a massive effectiveness multiplier for him. Removing X would _seriously _threaten his ability to make sure his hosts survive, and he's got quasi-virus instincts from what he was made from that say that hosts are a survival necessity. The virus within X is also a part of him, to, so an attack on X will be interpreted 'emotionally' as equivalent to an assault on Omega with intent to kill. WilyAI knows that if he does this, Omega will end him. Or worse. And, unlike Wily, he's sane enough to let this actually deter him from doing it._

_Making sure that everything they do is their own idea and in their own best interests is probably the only safe way to handle an entity of that power level - the problem with Lovecraft's creations is that they do not operate according to human logic, so there's no way to figure out how their minds work and predict what they'll do under certain circumstances, then manipulate those circumstances. Wily solved that problem in this 'verse by installing a mind and logic system he designed himself._

* * *

It annoyed Zero to be summoned or contacted by his other self because Omega didn't summon or contact, he acted. This time, Zero was out patrolling the grounds and wondering if he should scare some birds away from one of the plantings – they were doing a number on it, which would probably screw with X's data, but he might be too happy about living things appearing on their own to care – when all of a sudden he was inside the house and quite a lot of data on potential threats had been dumped into his head.

Of course, if the alternative was to actually have to talk to Omega, or have to wait even longer to get the news about Lumine, a new virus and potential Wily deathtraps or who knew what, then he didn't mind. Not that he'd admit that.

There was no need to say that he was angry at Omega for letting X go face Dr.-goddamn-Wily alone, not to mention X for asking him some cryptic questions before he left that were only meaningful in hindsight. Very annoying hindsight.

He, they, were the ones that were supposed to be in danger. Supposed to fight. Not X. It had nothing to do with Dr. Light's wishes for his creation as opposed to Dr. Wily's, it was because Zero was a heartless killing machine and X was X. The first maverick virus was bad enough for him, and Omega wanted to unleash a second as an _experiment_?

He decided to see if he could actually yell at Omega later, though. Right then wasn't a good time.

Not when X had dropped to his knees before Omega, who had somehow ended up in what was usually X's chair (Zero wondered if he'd been summoned into it suddenly the way Zero had, actually). Not when X put his head in that lap and trembled as Omega dug his hands into X's hair to soothe him (X didn't need to wear a helmet these days, not with that white lab coat), and Zero could feel him pull energy away from X. Darkness. It made X shudder with relief, and Zero knew this was more than a post-combat crash. X hadn't had one of those after a firefight… Ever, unless you counted the first-ever battle with Sigma.

Omega kept stroking that short black hair, the opposite of his own flowing silver. "I'm sorry. You should never have been tainted with those emotions."

"For you," X said simply. Without moving his head or looking up, he held up his right hand. His fingers were curved in, as though he was grasping something. When he opened them, a purple light appeared on his palm.

"Hmm," Omega mused. "Perhaps I should simply eat him." Absorb his knowledge and the energy of his hate and madness.

"He is your father," X said, then yawned softly. He seemed utterly innocent, trusting and beautiful lying there in Omega's grasp and Zero ached to be the one that held him.

"You burned up a lot of power." Omega actually looked a little worried, as well as regretful. "Power from the negative emotions I just removed from you as well as love. He's not in danger," he told Zero, "but guard him. And let him sleep. His systems can focus on evolving while he's sleeping." He looked down at X again. "My Elysian virus as well… Of course I don't mind you altering it. I can't understand half the emotions you do because I can't feel them. Once you've figured out how to upgrade the defenses against hatred and anger, copy them into the master version of the virus and I'll distribute the changes to all the children."

X nodded, a small movement, instead of saying, "Yes, Master Omega." He really was tired, and already beginning that work, with Master Omega's permission.

Omega jerked, startled, now that X's mind wasn't focusing on nudging Omega's scan away from certain topics. "He tried to… Oh, I see. At least he wasn't actually trying to usurp my authority by forcing you to acknowledge him as your master. I'd definitely kill him for that." Then he scowled at Zero. "He blames himself for that time you self-destructed. Still." That was Zero's screw-up: it was his job to reassure X about it. "They're only mostly vegetables. I replaced his control coding with an edited version of the Elysian Virus and stuck them in bodies. They'll be kept someplace isolated until they're smart enough to hide that they were human or recover some memories. No, by the way. There wasn't enough left to tell me how he did that. It was a traumatic memory, but being murdered and then waking up infected doesn't tell me anything about how it was done." The fragments of Dr. Wily's gloating left in there weren't specific enough. "Still, it's not controlling humans per se, but if they can be copied into energy, infected, and then placed in reploid bodies, that kills two…" He paused when X made a small distressed noise. "They're just metaphorical birds." There, there.

"Dr.," X yawned. "Light."

"Do you think that's a conversion instead of a copy?"

"_I could… find out_." For you.

"In the morning." Or later, because there were other things to do. He finally took the light from X, and it wasn't until a second had passed and nothing had happened that he relaxed. "How to ensure that someone likely to be extremely resistant succumbs to my control?" he asked, and it was a rhetorical question. "Oh, good. Very good." Omega's smile was fanged. "You didn't even scratch his memories of how to build a time machine. I'll have to dig up a few of the components myself, but all I need to do is break him down a little further, put him in a body set to self-configure, then have someone build that machine, or actually time dilation would be more convenient."

"And by the time he's let out, the virus would have had a century to work on him, and he'll be just as much yours as X is?" Zero smirked and realized that he actually approved. It was poetic justice, for one thing, and with a mind like that under control, they could ensure that nothing went wrong. That X stayed safe.

"More. He's a human, so he doesn't possess X's ability to evolve, or a power source that somewhat counters our virus. If it works, we can have him solve the problems with conversion. With that, and time travel, we could save your friend Dr. Cain: you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Of course X would: they could feel his gratitude. "It's a pity going back too far isn't safe. If I went into the time period when I was scrambled, or a time period when our half-brother was still alive?" He shuddered. "If they'd wanted to win, they would have used this technology: our father was right about that. Time travel, reality warping: Blues hacked his files and knew enough to counter _me_. Humans are far easier to kill, or subdue. They could have turned them all into robot masters, for that matter… We're going to have a guest." He opened his free hand and a small yellow orb appeared: as soon as Zero wondered why it was so much smaller than Wily's he knew the answer: age, mainly. This one was a reploid.

"You should make yourself scarce, then." Omega's existence was a secret. And Zero wanted him to go away on general principles.

"No, I think this one should meet me." If Omega hadn't used his own abilities to deal with the house's security system, the intruder would have been shocked when he tried to pull the door open so hard, without even knocking. "_Come in_," he murmured.

"Hey, where are you?" Axl ran in. "Wake up! Something's happened to Red, and no one will-" He reflexively caught the small yellow light that was tossed at him.

"Scan it with your copy system," Omega told him.

Axl blinked, surprised. "This is… so who is…"

"The short version is that all our brothers are traitors, bastards, or both." Omega made the purple orb vanish for now. "My condolences."

Clearly this told Axl absolutely nothing, as he stood there clutching the precious light to his chest.

No more answers were forthcoming, since Omega vanished an instant later. X's head landed on the cushion comfortably enough, but Zero picked him up anyway. Zero wasn't as enthusiastic about it, but they had a 'proper' bed and X liked sleeping in it. No reason to leave him lying around in the living room, even if almost anywhere was comfortable enough for a reploid. Otherwise they'd never have gotten to sleep mode in the old Hunter recharge capsules. "It can wait until X wakes up or Omega takes care of that problem permanently," he told the kid. "Come on: there are guest rooms."

Utterly confused, Axl protested, "But I'm not tired."

"Well, find something to do. This isn't a good time for you to go home." Not when someone might ask about the yellow light, and going home meant going back to his father (or the fake version of his father, according to Omega's little tactical download), who was now a Maverick. "I have to guard X. He just had a fight with one of the bastards responsible for all this, so he's tired. Cooperate, and they might let you help them deal with the other two." Other three, technically, since this was more Omega's fault than it wasn't, but Omega had obviously left him behind with an adorably exhausted X so that Zero would have to explain, and he wasn't going to, no matter _how _tempted he was to get the kid furious with Omega.

Especially since he wouldn't be the first brother Omega had killed, and X would probably be sad if he died, not to mention unhappy with Zero.

Luckily that made the kid shut up, although he still trailed after Zero with wide, curious eyes, hugging his little nightlight to his chest. He must have been really frightened, Zero knew, and wished he felt more compassion. Sadly, that was difficult for him even before Omega had focused him on X. It wasn't Omega's fault, it was the person Omega was using as his current mad science project, so more power to him for once.

Zero wanted to keep his eye on the kid because he wasn't one of Omega's, and that meant that it was possible for him to think about hurting X and physically possible for him to do it. The bad part was that X was sleeping, which meant he couldn't fight, and Zero was carrying him, which meant the only way to get his hands free in a hurry would be to drop him. It wasn't as though X would be hurt by a drop of just a few feet, but Zero still hated the idea, which was why it set his teeth on edge that the kid was following him.

If the kid actually did shoot him in the back, then forget Omega, _Zero _would kill him and devour his energy pattern to make sure he couldn't be revived from backup or cyberspace, but that wouldn't undo X being attacked in his own home, after the damn wars should have been over.

If it was possible for him, he would have killed Omega for this.

It should bother him more that his default response was still killing things when Omega was able to think about other ways of solving problems even when those problems had _hurt X_, but since Omega's alternate solution was locking someone in solitary for a century with nothing but the virus to fixate on for comfort, killing was probably still less evil. Not that X would see it that way; he would probably be smiling for weeks if this worked. Family reuniting. With hugs, if X had anything to say about it, and Zero bet he did. As long as it was made clear that Dr. Wily was _Omega's _creator and Zero was _not _hugging any old bastards…

Who was he kidding.

He couldn't say no to X any more than X could say no to Omega.

No, that was untrue. X had both of them, both of him, wrapped around his exquisitely crafted little fingers.


	16. Greens

_This chapter invokes a reason I use the garden metaphor. _

_Take a look at a garden. Ask a gardener who knows their stuff how many poisonous things are growing there. After they give you a list, and you've been horrified by how many times over a child playing in that garden and putting stuff in their mouth would have died if children running on instinct didn't know more than most adults about how to deal with potential poisons, take another look and realize that the correct answer to the question of how much of a garden's biomass, pretty and nutritious plants alike, is poisonous is _all of it.

_Plants have been evolving to kill things that eat them for eons, and animals that eat them have been evolving to survive those poisons long enough to reproduce for the same period. _

_Speaking of lifesaving things that should be good for you but are actually really dangerous, I'm co-writing a Classic AU along the lines of EXE (except far more similar to Classic-with-twists) with Haruna Rei. In this 'verse, the doctors went into not robots or internet, but medical nanotech. There's a link on my profile. _

* * *

If Zero was being snide, which he was sometimes, he would describe Omega's predicament so:

Omega had woken up to find that the world was already conquered, except without the pesky 'conquering' part that involved making a lot of people unhappy and inclined to rebel and otherwise make trouble by wanting things like rights and to not be killed for being the wrong species, the way the robot masters had almost been. So, after the rogue virus was dealt with, there was peace and plenty and everyone was happy, and since they were ruling themselves even though they were under Omega's control, they did the paperwork and made the annoying minor decisions like zoning laws and taxes.

Best of both worlds.

Except without rebellions or bureaucracy to deal with, there wasn't much to do but play house, which was why Zero had been so bored up until now. The only real problem remaining was what to do with X's pets, since, to extend the metaphor, Dr. Wily had designed Omega to be allergic to them.

It was entirely Omega's own fault X had become a crazy cat lady, except with humans. Only instead of a few dozen, X and the reploids he'd created had managed to keep a few hundred million alive. Again, it was entirely Omega's own fault for making it so that instead of developing to be self-sufficient, X was dependant on having people around. And in the absence of selfish, cruel, sadistic, violent, etc. Omega toying with him, there'd just been selfish, cruel, etc. etc. humans.

The cat metaphor kept working better the longer Zero thought of it this way.

Omega could have gotten rid of X's pets, but that would have… Well, it wouldn't have made X sad. Omega had too much control over X's emotions for that. It would still have been a mean thing to do, especially since the reason X had been able to justify keeping them around to himself had something to do with believing Omega was a good person, and Zero knew how much he hated the idea of proving X wrong about that.

Also, X looked cute with children/kittens.

The way he did right now, for example.

* * *

After Axl had given up on trying to get answers out of Zero right then, and at least he'd had the decency to hesitate to wake X up, the little yellow light – which Zero had some suspicions about – had nudged him out of the room.

Actually, Zero didn't mind babysitting. He liked training. He got to let them screw up, then hit them over the head, tell them exactly how ignorant they were, and then they _listened _to the person who knew what they were talking about when it came to not doing damn stupid things. It was dealing with people who thought they knew what they were doing and wouldn't listen to him that was annoying. Human children were simultaneously dumber and cleverer than trainees: it was like a mechanaloid with a reploid trying to get out, trying to figure out how to interface with the world.

It made him think of how X might have been, in his capsule, only he doubted X had been driven to tears and screaming with frustration by the inability to get their ability to affect the world to _work properly, dammit_ anywhere near as often.

Still, it was a good thing Axl's 'real daddy,' (except not really) had taken over herding the kid around and keeping him out of trouble, because Zero had X to watch until he finished adjusting his systems to prepare for the next time and woke up.

Exploring, the two of them found the hot springs first, but a free-floating ball of energy plus mineral rich water equaled electric shock, and Axl got bored fast of being in the water, even weird hot water, when he couldn't play with anyone.

X had several greenhouses in the complex: the one that was attached to the house was the showcase, not one he used for testing. The others had plants that were selected more for their ability to handle harsh conditions and enrich soil than edible parts or the ability to look pretty, but this one contained a lot of plants with pretty flowers (to take home) or edible parts (for people to try).

X had picked up quite a lot about plants from Dr. Cain, and it turned out that there was a reason for the way human children acted about them in videos. Human children, and Axl was the only reploid Zero had ever met that he'd consider a _child,_ were geared to go after brightly-colored sweets because they were the part of the plant other life forms were allowed to eat. Hence, they were less likely to be immediately deadly.

Honestly, the human xenophobia and paranoia that had caused Dr. Wily to believe that they were inherently evil and would try to kill decent people because they were different made perfect sense from Zero's perspective. They'd evolved in a threat-rich environment, where absolutely everything was out to kill them, on top of the fact that they had to kill and eat other life forms to survive in the first place. Even their _survival necessities, _other life forms that they _had _to eat, in order to obtain essential nutrients, killed them slowly. They'd have had to be very stupid not to have figured out that there was a pattern there.

Dr. Arciel had called it, "Waiting for the other shoe to drop," and said there was an old quote: "It's quiet. Too quiet." She was surprised when Zero didn't get the reference even though he was a veteran, and explained that in movies and the old days, there were always birds and so on around. So when soldiers didn't hear anything moving out there, they knew that something had scared off the wildlife, cleared out the minor threats.

Although Dr. Arciel herself didn't have any of that vague, existential nervousness because she was monitoring and uncovering all sorts of science projects started by mad and desperate people. She had too many valid potential threats to deal with to feel a need to go looking for the real problem.

It was ironic, knowing what Zero knew, that she came here to relax, to have a chance to monitor a project that wasn't likely to cause explosions, just flowers and breathable air. It was kind of counterproductive for her to be the one to oversee X's work, since she didn't know the first thing about biology, but everyone had sort of agreed that this would have to do until someone could convince her to take a vacation. Not that there were many vacation spots where a human could sit in a quiet place and breathe in the scent of flowers and green life.

Most ambient noise on the missions Zero had been on was caused by machinery, but he'd realized that she was right: there was a sort of not-exactly-sound that was caused by someone trying to be quiet. Sometimes there were locations that seemed a little too safe, and that was when someone who had survived Unit Zero's missions without getting ambushed at close range and infected knew that this was a setup.

That was why X had told Omega to keep the vast majority of reploids unaware of the virus, because if they were worried about the future too, if they weren't acting as though everything was alright, then they wouldn't make humans wonder what the reploids knew that they didn't. All fear was fear of the unknown, according to X, so if people weren't afraid of something, that implied they understood it, or thought they did.

It was just that Dr. Arciel might or might not be completely wrong about her safety here.

Zero found Axl sitting on the floor, happily piling together some arcane concoction of tomato greens, mint leaves, rose petals and other crunchy things to see how it turned out when he came to get him. It made him pause, leaning against the doorsill. The mixing stuff wasn't weird: he'd seen kids do that before. It was the way Axl took the shiny fruit, practically labeled 'eat me!' and set it aside, even though it was colorful and sweet and the greens were bitter (which generally meant poison).

The kids in the classes whose teachers petitioned X for a tour so they could see history and nature would pretend to cook with mixtures they'd never eat in a million years, but Axl was actually trying bits of it, eating something bitter and not considering it icky at all, when the reploid sense of taste was designed to match the human one. So… without being 'taught' to like it, led to acquire the taste, he seemed to like something that should automatically taste bad? He was disregarding a copied alarm system?

Something was clearly wrong with the boy's learning and threat indicator systems. Maybe they were still configuring? Not that tomato greens were poisonous to reploids, of course, but most reploids picked up what they should and shouldn't eat when it came to organic stuff by watching humans. Rookies that imitated people who knew what they were doing lived longer.

All reploids could digest human food, or rather pull it apart for useful molecules and minerals, because the virus gave their nanites the ability to adapt like that without needing a specialized system for it. Otherwise such systems would have gotten cut from most reploids due to volume constraints. Sometimes a reploid would get hit with a sudden urge to eat rocks when they were low on a mineral: Dr. Wily had thought that Omega's creations would have to forage for themselves in a devastated world, while Dr. Light had built X assuming the presence of an infrastructure that could support him. That would give him a vested interest in keeping that infrastructure intact, too, although Zero didn't know if he'd thought of it that way. Probably not: despite the recording he'd left, the AI was worried for X, not by X, even though according to Omega's threat profile download the Light AI had detected the virus and (correctly, in Zero's opinion) labeled it a threat.

Zero knew Axl wasn't a reploid, Elysian or Maverick. Maybe he'd started thinking of him in human terms because what else was there?

Stupid. He knew what else there was.

But seeing something that was almost like what a hyperactive human child would do and yet _off_, in a way that went against their survival programming and encoded value system? An entity without the instinctive programming, created by evolution and the virus, that guided each race? If he had instincts, they'd been created by Wily, just like Zero's.

Different meant unpredictable meant dangerous. Until he figured out how Axl's mind worked, he had no idea what the… the person would do. So he had to prepare for the worst.

It was only sensible.

Still, if he hadn't been forced to listen X happily talk, and talk to people, about breeding food plants that could survive in the wastes, tastes and whether it was safe for the children to play here and all that stuff, he would have thought Axl was more an android, more 'human-like,' than X himself.

He wondered if that was why no one was worried about Axl and Lumine, even though they should be. They were considered somewhere in between two known quantities. No one had really figured out how alien they really were, even though it was spelled out right there in the report.

Human children were mainly a danger to themselves. Miniature mad scientists that needed to be kept away from the sharp things until they figured out how it worked.

_Not a child_. He had to keep that in mind.

* * *

It was hard to do that when Axl was clutching the ball of light like a child with a security blanket, and had that 'trying to figure this out' frown on they often got when the world was being _difficult _and not working the way they'd thought it did, so they had to adjust their model and it was annoying. Elysian reploids were rarely so frustrated, and the default reaction was never anger. It took something big for them to feel annoyance at a really difficult problem.

Pouting was undignified, too, so they barely ever did it. Even X only did it to tease.

Actually, Axl was clutching at Red-light because he wanted to make sure he stayed there and wasn't taken so he could focus on other stuff.

Honestly, he didn't really care that he hadn't been made by the people he'd thought he was made by. They hadn't visited or anything. He'd been abandoned, to maybe just die, and if Dr. Arciel hadn't made them acknowledge he existed, they wouldn't have. He'd wanted to know where he came from, for the sake of knowing, but he'd preferred Red. His creators were jerks. So finding out that he'd been created by a different jerk wasn't a big deal, in and of itself. Except it meant he had brothers that weren't Lumine, who he'd never liked. "So Lumine's kind of like you."

"Me?" Zero asked.

Axl wondered why he'd thought Axl was talking about him when Axl was talking to X. "No, you," he said, looking directly at X instead of not really at anything in particular, which he did when he was trying to think. "You pay so much attention it's kind of creepy. Arciel said that eye contact was polite and I should do it, but it's weird to study people like that. What if they don't _want _someone trying to figure them out? And what they're thinking. I mean, I don't know what I'm thinking about things yet most of the time. I don't like people telling me what I feel like they know when I'm still thinking." He tilted his head. "It's like trying to analyze people without permission, so you can use their abilities and do stuff while pretending to be them."

He was applying the ethics of his own systems? X was happy he took that so seriously, but Axl went on, "You scanned me, and you said that was what you do to try to figure out how stuff works, and Lumine looks at people like that. Like they're vid systems and he wants to figure out how to get them to play _Star Wars, _even if they want to make a call. Oh!" That explained it! "That's what the virus does, right? It makes people feel the way Sigma… I meant the virus," because X had said that wasn't Sigma, and Red was right here, he wasn't the one that had stared at Axl creepily like he wanted to take him apart. "What someone else wants them to do." He nodded.

"What do you do when you want someone to do something for you?" X wondered.

"Red said to ask nicely, and keep in mind that they want to do their own stuff. And do stuff for them so they might want to do stuff for you. Oh, and money. Which is giving them a reason to want to do it, too." It was their own decision.

"Do you think Red has gotten better at being a father to you? Learned what you like?"

Axl nodded.

"That's learning about people," X explained. "Trying to understand them. It isn't perfect," not without the virus. "But if people care, they try. They want to know how to help someone be happy. To do nice things for them without having to be asked every single time. There's a difference between manipulation and empathy."

"Well, it is manipulation. It's just manipulation that I don't mind." Because it was Red, and he tried not to do creepy things. "I mean, unless I've got the meaning of the word mixed up. Doing stuff to something so that it does what you want it to? Even if you just want them to be happy and okay. Red says that you're trying to sort of be like him, but for everybody, and it's hard, and Lumine is my little brother so hopefully he's trying to figure out how to not act like a jerk because he was the favorite," although Axl doubted it, "but I don't want people making decisions about me." For him. Like Dr. Weil insisting it would be best if he stayed in a lab. "Anyway, you're trying to figure out how I feel about this, and I'm still figuring it out. So even if you knew exactly how I felt about it now, you'd be wrong soon as soon as I figured more stuff out. So it just wastes time." Unless someone was trying to figure out how to make Axl change his opinion in the direction they wanted him to, and Axl didn't want to have to deal with that when he was trying to make up his _own _mind.

X laughed.

"What?"

"And now you're trying to figure out why I did something… No, I'm not mocking you, you're just unusually blunt."

Axl looked at X askance, but took X's word for it. Oh. "You didn't assume that that was an insult, right? I hate it when people do that." He'd say something about somebody, and then they'd think he'd meant something else and get angry at him and not listen when he tried to explain and it got really annoying. "It's a lot less annoying than Weil, anyway."

"What about Dr. Weil?"

"He thinks he knows how everybody works. It's annoying. Especially because he _does_. If you hadn't come and I hadn't argued a lot, he would have changed Red's mind about letting me stay. Because he was talking about my health and safety. He didn't even argue himself much, he got Arciel to do all the arguing so she seemed like the jerk." Even though Axl had really, really not cared and wanted to stay. "I mean, at least you think that I'm hard to understand instead of simple."

X looked thoughtful. "Axl? I think what concerns you is that people need to be aware that other people are _people_, whose thoughts and feelings are just as important and complex as their own, instead of things. That's right, isn't it?"

Axl nodded, because that was true, even if there was more.

"I should loan you some psychology books." Maybe the ones with ridiculous theories first: Axl might find that funny and it would spur discussion. If X showed him things X didn't believe in, then that would show X expected him to take everything with a grain of salt, and would keep an open mind when it came to Axl, as well. "We show other people that we care and respect them in different ways, because people like different things. One person likes staying in a lab, other people don't want to go. Zero hates labs," for instance. "So we have to work to understand each other, even though you're right, it's a lot of work and it's not that easy. Still, it's the work that matters. You were happy that Red cared enough to want to make you happy, yes?"

Yes.

"Humans vary more than reploids." For reasons X didn't intend to tell him about. "There are some humans that aren't very good at figuring other people out. So they can try as hard as they can, and it will still seem like they don't care, because they don't know how to… manipulate others into feeling loved. They can be utterly bewildered by the variety of people around them, unable to lower things to the lowest common denominator and figure out the rules. There are also humans that are very, very good at manipulation, because to them, it's only manipulation. Only pushing buttons and levers for the desired result. You see, what makes people so complex is that they're people, with all their own, changing quirks. If a human doesn't see other people as people, well. That makes it much easier for them to generalize. To simplify the equation and derive. They can perform experiments, not worrying about the fact they're toying with people's feelings. They can be very charming, when they know that getting other people to trust them works to their advantage. They can make someone feel loved when they're just taking advantage of them. The word for that sort of person," X said, smiling the smile of someone who had solved a puzzle, "is sociopath."

"_And you act like that because you care so much," _Zero sent. "_Don't look at me like that. You're scary sometimes." _What he'd managed to do was scary. "_No, it's not Omega's fault for once." _If Omega could program in people skills, he would have done it to himself. This was entirely Dr. Light's fault. "_Still, the kid is right. Maybe I should deal with him?" _Because Zero wasn't any good at dealing with people.

"_Don't talk about me like I'm not here_." Axl pouted. "I _hate _that."

Zero was shocked, but X didn't miss a beat. "_I'm sorry. Most of the time, people can't hear us unless I've placed some of my nanites into them, and you didn't like it when I did that. Zero… Zero is a very private person." _Not that this excused the rudeness. "_I think he didn't want you to hear him insulting _other _people." _So it wasn't really talking about _him_. "_What have you copied since I saw you last?" _

"I've got… you-nanites?" Since Axl was nanites and stuff they'd built, that was like having part of someone else's body in him: _weird_. Still, he was kind of curious. "_I don't know how I got them." _

"_Well," _X offered, holding out his hand, _"I could scan you and see. It might help you learn more about your body. If you were supposed to be immune, you should be able to tell when something is a foreign nanite." _X could teach him.

And that was how Axl ended up curled against X's side, looking for all the world like he was asleep, while X stroked that spiky hair and smiled. _"Shh,_" his mind whispered to Zero, as he pressed a finger to his lips. "_He's sleeping_."

A life form designed to be immune. By Dr. Wily. And X had locked him in hibernation stasis?


	17. Seedlings

_There are a few reasons viruses get less deadly over time: most of them boil down to the fact that a virus that has killed all potential hosts has no more to spread to and is SOL. A virus that kept its hosts alive and healthy so that they could reproduce and create more hosts, ensuring that it can continue to survive, would qualify as a symbiote. I sometimes joke that there's a reason the common cold killed off the Martians in __War of the Worlds __and would do the same thing to any zombie hordes: It has a vested interest in our survival._

_There's a life form that, in the distant past, ended up infiltrating other life forms and provided them with nifty power boosts. By doing so, this species, known as mitochondria, won at evolution. The Elysian Virus makes them healthier, is a power supply, makes them _immortal, _comes with free mental phone/internet capability and is otherwise an awesome thing to have around. If it weren't for the brainwashing part, you would kind of have to be an idiot to turn something like that down._

_There's a Fridge Horror explanation for why there are aliens in Classic series and none in X and later: the evil energy that Duo pursued was part of a larger infestation and they're all dead. __Humans evolved hunting down and killing plants and animals. Then, we realized that we could grow and raise our own food. This meant we got a much better standard of living and the chosen species were also made better off, at least by the standards of that bitch Mother Nature. _

_The part of Omega that is naturally evolved was basically evolving for constant warfare, a struggle for survival where hosts had to be sacrificed and used to destruction because otherwise they'd be killed anyway before they managed to infect new hosts. __The Elysian Virus is meant to create a peaceful, Eden-like existence for the entire world's population, and that would mean he would never go hungry again, metaphorically. Obviously, this is a vast improvement over the natural state and he would like to keep it this way._

* * *

"I didn't imprison him in his body, Zero." X shook his head, frowning. Why had Zero assumed X was smiling because he'd done something clever and evil when he'd just wanted to help the boy? He hoped Zero hadn't started to think he _liked _those things, or thought they were a good idea to begin with. "He wanted to learn." The fact this would keep him out of the way for awhile was useful, but this was for Axl's benefit. He wasn't one of Omega's, but if he was Wily's, that made him kin. X wouldn't crack him like that, not unless he became an enemy. He'd had a terrible couple of days: X thought he (well, Omega, but X would see to it on his behalf, as always) owed him some time dreaming happy dreams with his father.

"You mean…" "_He's actually self-configuring, evolving?"_ Was that safe, letting him get stronger? When the two of them had probably been made to challenge Omega?

"He's thirty years too early to challenge Master Omega." He could create a modified virus and spread it, yes. He had some defenses against Master Omega's techniques, yes, but, "Dr. Wily must have planned to support one of them." If they showed that they followed his ideals on their own. Otherwise, X was certain they would have been forgotten as he moved on to the next attempt, like Shadowman, Forte, Omega. The only change was that Wily hadn't tried to order them around from the beginning. Had so many of his children really abandoned him that he didn't have it in him to give these two a chance to be loyal unless they earned it?

Yes.

"Or at least," X amended himself, "Use them to create viruses." And spread them. "Distractions, perhaps? But no. They're not the same sort of being as Master Omega. Physical instead of energy beings, highly adaptive… I think they were based on me. Somewhat." Copying what Dr. Wily had thought let him defy Master Omega. The thought almost made him laugh. "He'd probably be upset if he heard me say that, though."

Zero just shrugged in response to that. Once Omega was done? Zero knew there was no way Omega would be willing to let Dr. Wily anywhere _near _X, not until he was _certain_ that it wasn't a trick or trap, that there wasn't any defiance left. And, from what Zero knew, Dr. Wily had been a tricky, vengeful defiant bastard who kept coming back after he should have been stopped. Even being killed by Omega hadn't really stopped him.

Now, X laughed. "I think you're becoming the… inner practical pessimist? Or outer, actually." He tilted his head to the side questioningly. "What's wrong with Master Omega having an equal?"

A few months ago, Zero would have asked if X was fermenting rebellion or something now, but words like that made X flinch. "Every time I think I know what you can do…" Zero was just a puppet and-

"Zero, you're not just a puppet."

Zero hadn't even sent that.

"You didn't need to, I know that expression. And I know what you look like when you're surprised." X held his hand out as he had for Axl: there was space left on the couch, since X had sat in the middle. "…and the network is functional now. You should reach out more."

"Were you using it?" Was it just the standard mind reading, instead of X's?

"No, I don't want to grow dependant on it."When it didn't work on two species, now. "But you should. You don't really need to worry about remerging." When he sat down, X leaned against him, carefully making sure Axl's head ended up on his lap instead of being jarred as it slipped from X's shoulder. "Don't you want to be able to read me? To enter my mind?"

"…We're all very lucky you aren't actually evil." He kissed X's bare head. "Yes, I want that." He'd done it, hadn't he? When he'd felt X tremble, felt those energies in conflict. Except that hadn't been the net, that had been his own power. Omega's own. "…And I want there to be someone who can stop him. If it comes to that." If X couldn't.

"Thank you for your permission," X said, bowing his head. Then the corners of his mouth turned upward. "Master Zero."

"…You were able to do this because you knew I would approve it?"

X sighed, nuzzling into his neck. "I know you. Don't you remember what I told you? The virus was to _protect me_. So he didn't have to kill me, and he kept it from hurting me. You don't trust yourself either, Zero, and you and Omega are one and the same. So… I knew this would make you feel better." That he would want there to be a check on his power. "I would… I don't have veto power, but… for your sake, I would try to stop you, if… But it would be painful, and I know you don't want that. So…"

Zero tried to fill in the blanks, knowing that there were things that X didn't want to think or say, so he'd suggest them. Leave the interpretation up to him, so any disloyal thoughts there would be… ones that he also had. Or something. "So someone who could slow me… Him… Alright," he acknowledged. "Me, down long enough to listen to reason." To you.

"Don't you feel better now?"

"Yes," Zero said, kissing his hair again. "You take very good care of me." Of Omega, but…

"And you of me."

"You… _Dr. Wily._" Was X _insane? _"What if he'd…" Some trap, or Easter Egg in the virus, or…

"I trust you."

"You are insane."

At that point, X leaned up and Zero tilted his head to the side, mirroring him. He liked to think that he was getting better at kissing, but since X had suggested it, now was probably a good time to _reach…_ Oh, yes, that was nice. Which was probably why he didn't do it often.

"I like it when you purr," X murmured softly.

"_You used to want to talk inside all the time."_

"_I'm not deprived of it anymore." _They were here now, after so long. "_You're with me. By my side." _He smiled against Zero's lips. "_In my head. I'm not alone there anymore… Oh, yes, that's nice. But I like your voice, too_."

"_Omega's busy with Wily, isn't he?"_ Zero asked, trying to just gently touch X's mind, around the edges. X liked it so far.

"_Zero… I'm not putting the moves on you because he's busy." _Zero felt the amusement rippling up within X's mind.

"…_.You'd put the moves on me even if he was here." _Or, especially if.

Zero could tell that outside, X was blushing demurely, but inside he was laughing like crazy, even as another emotion flowed to Zero. _"What can I say? You're beautiful. I'm yours." _He pulled back enough to say. "All of me. All of you."

"…I wanted you to love me more." Because Zero was the one who had been by his side, in the war years. "But the virus is a part of him, isn't it?" A few terrible, painful years versus a century: which of them had made X happier, kept him safer?

"Of you." X nuzzled at his cheek. "Of me." The Elysian Virus, anyway, the one X had grown with, the one he'd shaped as it had shaped him.

Into such a perfect creature, such warm light and enough darkness that Zero felt like he wouldn't ruin him by touching him (the other him had already done it, so there was nothing left but to take care of him). "Here?" He wondered, wrapping an arm around X's back, under his lab coat.

"Oh, yes." Not with Axl still on X's lap. X moved back and began to carefully try to slip out without disturbing him.

"I'll carry him," Zero offered, standing up. When X didn't say think you, he turned to him. "So you want to carry him?"

"…Yes," X admitted. "I didn't really get to take care of any of them. Sigma was so determined to 'grow up' and start helping out. He always hated being fussed over because he was the first and we were worried about him. Well, he'd put up with it, but I knew he didn't like it." Being babied. "He tried to pretend he didn't mind, since it made me happy," but X was a telepath.

As X carefully slid his arms under Axl's body and clutched him to his chest, Zero asked, "Do you want more… stupid question."

X looked to the side for a moment before asking, "How would you feel about four?" He was only able to admit that number was, "_…To start with_," in a mental aside, feeling terribly greedy.

"So_ that's_ what was in that sketchbook." The one that X kept in a locked drawer in his desk, with the _especially _top secret, his-eyes-only deployment orders and emergency defense scenarios. The one he'd get out sometimes, eyes either bleak or lit up with inspiration, and page through or furiously work in, either line after line of X's deliberately hard to read yet very pretty to look at cursive or brisk, detailed sketches of faces, armor, special components.

"We weren't up to creating armor that could defend against everything, so I was working on designs that were optimized for stealth and each element. At first I thought about working out theoretical optimizations and then seeing what I had to remove because it was mutually exclusive, but then I realized that if I made more than one they could cover each other's weak points, you see…" X still wouldn't meet his eyes, because they had Dr. Wily, a new virus, humanity and the head of the scientific committee to deal with, so he really needed to focus his full attention on politics and strategy instead of his own, selfish wishes. He shouldn't be telling Zero this, because Zero would want to give him this dream, and Zero needed to focus too.

He knew that he rarely asked for things, and Omega gave him incredible, insane gifts, like the virus, like his life, like humanity and _Zero. _Omega had cut his soul in two and he had done it for _X_, even though it made Omega happy as well. So he shouldn't let Zero know he wanted this, but Zero had asked, and he wanted this. He really did. Not now, but it was a dream that had sustained him through years of war. That someday he could do this _right_. Someday he could fix them all, or Master Omega could, and then there would be children who would never have to know war and terror, never have to go without anything because X wasn't good enough.

He wanted to give them the sun, moon and stars. "I didn't want to say anything until after things were settled." Like he hadn't dared let Omega see that X would like it if he started reviving the dead children, since that might have spurred Omega to remove humanity so it could be done both quickly and safely. "And, really, now that we have access to all this new technology, I'll have to completely redesign them. There are compromises I won't have to make anymore. I'd already started working in the technology in Omega's records since he woke up, but if he really can… I do my best, but… _Doctor Wily_."

"You want him working on your children? Him?" Yes: X was insane sometimes.

"He's a genius." And X wasn't even anywhere near as good as his father. "If he thinks of them as his grandchildren, he won't sabotage them, I know it." And they'd be safe.

No compromises, no cutting corners, no being forced to rely on the virus because the technology simply wasn't there to back it up.

He wanted the best for his children, from now on.

That mix of joy, hope and guilt: Zero didn't like Omega.

He still sent him the entire confession, all his sensory data on it, because Omega should stop it with things like that cruel virus experiment and _get on this_. What was the point of being able to invade and do kinky things to X's mind if they hadn't even known he had this dream? "While we're talking about your wildest dreams…" he said mildly, not looking at him either, trying to pretend he was just talking. Had absolutely no intentions of moving heaven and earth to bring this about, no, not at all. He was the one that was determined to pretend he was normal and only had normal capabilities, remember?

"…I'd like them to know both their grandfathers. And… Omega is still seeing what he can piece together of what's left of Sigma." What X had done to those two human remnants was nothing compared to what the rogue virus, following Wily's imperatives, had done to Dr. Light's first grandchild. "He's not even well enough to talk yet, and…" X hoped.

"Well," if Omega could hand out do it… He could, Zero realized. But he should wait until X put Axl down. "Which guest room?"

"The one with the bay windows." So he won't be locked in a capsule in a dark room, hidden away like X had been. There'd be sunlight on his frame, a breeze when the weather was nice and the automatic windows opened.

After X had put him down, tucked him in, checked that there wasn't any dust on the bedside table and shut the door behind them as they left, Zero told X to, "Close your eyes." He clasped his hands together, then drew them apart .

He didn't think there were soft grey-green (sage green) stars in nature, but screw Wily's color scheme. This wasn't just any reploid. "Alright," he said, after checking it over. The personality was still mostly in hibernation mode, recovering, but this shouldn't hinder that. X would make sure it didn't. "You can open your eyes now."

X's hands reached out, soft and tentative. Disbelief subsumed by hope and wonder, and as he drew his hands back, the light following them, he clasped his arms around it, as Axl had, looking almost as though he was praying.

"_My… my child. I wanted you to be able to become anything, but…" _Not that, not something his child would never have chosen. "_I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I put you in such danger by making you, when I hadn't been given permission, when I brought you into a world of humans with only me there to protect you, and I _failed, _and…" _

Sigma couldn't forgive him, not yet. He wasn't awake enough to have knowledge or memory of what had happened, and without understanding what had happened and why X felt responsible, how could he forgive his father for his failure to protect him?

But the light curled against him, around his fingers: there was recognition there. X had touched Sigma's mind before he became aware. As he became aware, as he woke up for the first time.

X shielded Sigma with his arms, and Zero pulled X to his own chest, tucked that dark head under his. "It's alright. I'm here." So X didn't have to be afraid. Even if X doubted his own ability to protect Sigma, even if he still believed that he would fail him, he still didn't have to be afraid. He didn't have to do this alone.

He wasn't alone.

Never.


	18. Anemones

_Because I was trying to write for my _Mana Khemia_ fic, and the only thing I really wanted to write was X and Zero fluff. Of course, even when those two get fluff, there just has to be tragic, messed-up stuff in there (exhibit A: Iris)._

* * *

It said something about him that he felt more vague guilt, more like he was doing something he shouldn't be, about this than about killing. With killing, as a hunter, it had been necessary. He'd been intellectually aware that it wasn't their fault they were infected (except for a few idiots who had swallowed the propaganda and suffered for it), but the only part of it he'd been able to feel bad about was watching how it hurt others, that they had to do this. It never got any easier for the rookies, batch after batch of them, even though he would have thought they would figure this was just how the world worked, never having known anything else. That maybe they'd end up more like him.

They weren't able to shut off their hearts, become killing machines, and he supposed now he knew why.

Honestly, that was a good thing. The world didn't need more killers. Two of him was already more than he needed, and he was looking forward to doing something about that arrogant brat Lumine who thought he could play god when he was petty enough to select his Sigma not according to skills or intelligence that would be transferred to the other infectees but by who would hurt Axl most.

He should be doing something about that, permission or no permission, but instead he was doing this.

Hence the general guilt.

It wasn't even really that he was doing anything, which just doubled the niggling feeling that he was being lazy and sinful and such. He was just lying here, in the sun, while X's fingers combed through his hair, ran down his sides, pressed into the padding of his back to make sure that everything was aligned properly even though Zero's diagnostics were working perfectly and everything was fine.

There was a war brewing, Omega might not be monitoring things properly since he was busy with Wily there was an unknown quantity in the house and yet here he was, lying with his head pillowed on his arms, on a sun-warmed rock, still wet from the hot spring, while X, also wet, also warm and glistening and beautiful, touched him in a way that wasn't a seduction or massage, but certainly wasn't idle, either. He would have felt even guiltier because he wasn't touching back, that X was doing this for him and he wasn't making him feel good in return, if it weren't for those pleased hums and curls of affection against his mind. He might be some balance of blissful and berating himself for laziness, but X was entirely content, just to be here, and doing this.

The goal was probably to make him relax, and it was working, but he shouldn't be relaxing. If someone was going to be looked after and reassured here, it should have been X, but X was entirely content. He could feel it, just as surely as he felt those hands. It was offered to him as freely and as lovingly as this touch, as this time together.

He didn't think he could ever feel that content, that safe, that trusting and loving. As good as it felt to X, he just wasn't built to feel that way. He hadn't been built to be happy.

But he could feel X's happiness, and know he was causing it. That he wasn't useless when it came to everything except killing. If X ever actually wanted anyone dead, he would be on it, but, "_Being a housecat isn't bad._"

He felt X's quiet laughter, and not just in his mind: X laid down against him, and with his armor off Zero could feel the small vibrations, the humming of X's systems. "You can be anything you like," X told him. Reminded him.

Zero wanted to say that was only true of X, and X's children. That was what Dr. Light had built him for, and actually, the longer this went on, the more he began to really believe that maybe Omega hadn't ruined that.

Or, maybe… What he really should say… If he wanted to be fair…

Dr. Wily hadn't ruined it.

And he'd tried.

So maybe he really had saved X. At least by refraining from killing him, before he'd even had a chance to _live_. By limiting the virus enough that X had been able to work, to grow around it. He didn't know, but the thought… maybe it really was comfort he felt, and not just X's gifted emotions.

"You're spoiling me," he accused, and did it even count as an accusation when it was the truth? "Walking around without my armor – what if something happens?"

"You're not unarmed," X said mildly, and Zero had to admit that, well, in the grand scheme of things, given what the virus could do, given the capabilities Dr. Wily's insane mind had devised and Omega had unlocked for him since there was a credible potential threat to X out there, armor that was only a _little _better than the Hunters' best was like bringing a security blanket to the kind of orbital battle fought with kinetic weapons and tactical nukes.

So… why not? Was he justified at all in feeling guilty about this? Wait, "Do you _really _want me to use unconventional methods to defend you?" He looked up – there shouldn't be any uncontrolled orbitals up there, nothing spying on them, but still.

X sighed, but kept gently scratching Zero's scalp, hand fearlessly buried in deadly hair. "I'm not going to try to force you to start wearing human clothing, Zero." Not as an everyday thing, even though X didn't even wear a helmet unless he was taking a ride chaser somewhere, these days. X _did _know how to pick his battles. "I like your armor: it's _mine _that I was sick of." Sick of the weight, the way it blocked and deadened his senses, his ability to feel the wind and sun. The constant reminder of how the world was no longer a safe place and all that was riding on his safety. That he had to rely on this armor because the one who had promised to protect him wasn't _here _and he didn't even know what had happened to him. "Clownfish," he said, and Zero half-turned to peer at him for the seemingly random comment. "They're actually not extinct. Palette – you remember, the new intern at the tidal research station?"

Not off the top of his head, but he nodded after hitting the search function to remind himself.

"She's been scanning the coast, and she found sea anemones." Pretty undersea flowers. With deadly neurotoxins. "I had to tell her that no matter how soft and pretty they were, they didn't belong in the petting zoo they're putting together. Although they're perfectly safe for reploids. And clownfish."

"Yes. Since clownfish lure in prey for them. I have access to the original database I was built with now, remember?" Dr. Wily had loaded just about everything in there, because there was a fifty-fifty chance the robot masters would have to die too and there would be no one else to tell of it, to keep the new world from repeating humanity's mistakes. "This is not making you disturb me less, you realize."

"Orange is the exact opposite of blue," X said cheerfully. "If it wasn't so garish, I might start wearing some. It can look good with black, but I definitely don't want to wear black. It's such a depressing color." And getting themselves paint jobs with extra menacing black was something mavericks did, so there were too many unpleasant memories there for him to ever wear black clothes or paint.

"Are you making fun of me?"

"I'm having fun. You know that I can't tease other people or they think I've gone senile."

"Well, how old are you now? How many times the age of that cute newbuilt intern? She looks about the same age as you." But she was a very, very small fraction of it, even if you didn't count the hibernation. "Oldest person in the world, and you still look like jailbait." An old, old joke, the first one he'd tried to make, trying to deflect X's concern after the first time he'd been brought back to life, because being stoic hadn't worked. X had kept trying to get him to open up, the way he'd had when Sigma had assigned the fixed murderous irregular to train him. Tried to get him to be happy, and what had Zero known about that? So… jokes meant normal and happy, right? He'd thought it would get X to leave him alone, but instead it had delighted him. To everyone else, he was the elder, after all. The father of them all, even when he'd only been exploring the real world for what, six months longer than them?

He'd never gotten to be whimsical, to be a child, not when the world had needed him and what he could do. The humans had needed him to be Dr. Light and the reploids had needed him to be Omega. "You're having a first childhood," Zero realized. And trying way too hard. It made him realize that X must be far more worried than he had let on, or the virus' reassurances were letting him be, if he was acting like this might be his last chance to just... stop thinking, be whimsical, let everything go for once. It felt so unnatural because it was: he wondered if X had any idea _how _to stop thinking about other people, to do things spontaneously instead of trying to plan everything out.

"Part-time," X corrected him, smiling at the thought. "I'm also being a botanist part-time."

"And a tutor, a… not-exactly-politician, a reploid medical research consultant, a philanthropist," X had his own half of Cain Labs, and Dr. Cain's half had been divided between him and Signas, the only one of Dr. Cain's personal creations still both alive and _sane _by then. "You're still wearing too many helmets."

"And none of them are helmets, and none of them involve killing people." Stress? What stress? This was _wonderful_. "I get to meet interesting people, see all kinds of living things – clownfish survived! – and not kill them!" X's smile was even brighter than the small light that was currently inching closer and closer to the water and then discovering that touching the strange, moving refractive substance resulted in energy disruption and also electrocuted the water. And then promptly forgot, because the rogue virus had done something very nasty to pattern recognition capability. So it kept inching forward towards the water again, even though X had kept herding it away. Eventually, the two of them had decided to just let him do it and left the hot spring. Hopefully, the reoccurring unpleasantness would kick the copy of X's infinite potential system Omega had retrofitted the little thing with into action and it would either fix the virus damage or find some other way for what was left of Sigma to be able to learn and form memories again. It might not: the water wasn't actually _hurting _him, since the energy was replaced, otherwise X wouldn't have been able to watch this so easily.

"Dr. Cain got a dog, when we thought we could move here. After we fixed the problems that caused Irregulars." If he'd been able to retire, reduce his stress, he would have lived longer. Animals were good for old and sick humans. Companionship was good for them, and X would have had to commute. "He was like that, with the waves. He would run forward, to test the water, and then this big wall of water would loom over him, and he would run away. At first he was afraid, then he became more confident about it, and escaping became a game, and then he wasn't afraid anymore. He really did love swimming, Dr. Cain liked to watch him out there from the balcony. But then the virus happened, and it wasn't safe for him to come anymore." Not when he was a target. The base was heavily defended: they just wouldn't have been able to justify the same kind of defense for an isolated place like this. So he'd stayed on the base until he died, until the grief and guilt of what had happened to Repliforce, to the last two (three) reploids he considered his personal children, had caused his rapid and final decline.

"What happened to the dog?"

"I found him another home, but then that city had to be evacuated a little over a year later. He was mislaid in the scramble," they'd barely had enough transports for humans and reploids: pets were left behind, "and they never found him. Maybe he just became a wild dog." More likely he'd been blown up.

"I'm sorry." Any dog would have died years ago, of old age if nothing else. Brilliant, Zero. Sigma's behavior had clearly reminded X of that dog. He'd thought it was cute. And then Zero had made him think of how Dr. Cain was separated from that dog and then they both died. "I try not to be insensitive."

"Yes. I know. I know how hard you try. You've let me feel your emotions, too." Omega had lowered the security, but he still would have stayed out if Zero hadn't been willing. "I'm not the only one with the infinite potential system. I evolved with the virus. You can evolve around these limits, Zero. You want to, and you know what these emotions feel like now." Green eyes looked into his, only a few inches away now. "And, until you can feel peace and happiness for yourself, I'll feel them for you."

So, once again, he had to kiss him, until he felt X's mind become distracted. "_What_?" Zero wondered.

"_Not in front of Sigma, but I can't just leave him unsupervised… I'll put him with Axl," _X decided, and started to get up.

Zero carefully did not think aloud that this was a good idea because Red was obviously used to handling 'special' children. It just went to show that even during time that X had obviously 'booked' to be carefree and just about the two of them, he was still thinking about the situation, thinking about other people.


	19. Prunings

_Slice-of-life, plot… it would be nice if this fic made up its mind. Of course it's partially the muses at fault here, since X especially doesn't _want _there to be a plot, because plots in X and Zero series involve lots of deaths, and he's trying to keep someone from making with the genocide._

_Still, this is one of the three fics that I want to force to wrap up sometime soonish, so I may just do a cheap ending and call it a day in a few more chapters, unless anyone cares enough to want me to wrap things up properly? Judging from the reviews (which are the only way for writers to know these things, just to remind people), there isn't a lot of interest in this fic or where it's going, so unless I hear otherwise, Dr. Weil's plotline is going to get shafted. I kind of wanted to do something involving Ciel's ancestor finding out in the process of this too, but honestly I don't care enough at the moment, and even that would be easy to take care of._

_Humans are so fragile and squishy, so vulnerable to little freak accidents, after all… _

_Also: values dissonance._

* * *

"…I like the way Red is." And definitely, definitely didn't like the fake that was what he would have been with Lumine's virus. "…What, you thought I'd have a problem with this?"

"Virus," Zero repeated.

"Define virus," X countered. "And it's a symbiote, Zero." One that let his children survive.

"One that controls their minds?" Honestly, he was almost put out that Axl wasn't saying this was wrong on so many levels. Was it just that he wanted someone to be on his side here?

"It's more complicated than that, Zero. Or rather, it is for the Elysian Virus," X corrected himself.

"Right, it…" What was a good word?

"Even humans have genetic programming."

"Pruning. Bonsais."

"Guides."

Axl sighed, bored. "I thought you were going to show me how to kick the fake Red out of my Red's body and put the virus that's supposed to be there back in the other people?" Red wanted the Elysian Virus there, so it was up to him, and the other people would want it there too, if they knew. Axl might not get attachments and habits and being bound by society's rules himself, but Red had hammered it into his head that other people did think they were important and he should respect that. And stuff. So yeah.

"Why can't Omega just do it?" Since he had the capability, Zero knew, and it was his fault in the first place.

"Because I want to," Axl insisted. "…Kick Lumine's ass," he added, grinning. "And if he knows I did it, then he won't find out about you guys." So that all worked out perfectly.

"Also, do you want Omega to be distracted from what he's working on right now?" Did Zero _want _to risk Dr. Wily breaking loose? X honestly wondered for a second, looking at Zero. Then he sighed. "You really are bored, aren't you?" X was sorry.

"…That doesn't matter." Of course not. Not compared to things that were actually important, like maintaining this masquerade so nobody got wiped out, X's own happiness, Dr. Wily and Weil's machinations, stopping Lumine…

Of course, Zero could say that all he liked, but when X was… bound? Made? To put Zero's feelings and priorities ahead of his own?

X turned to Axl. "Which would you prefer, to do this quietly, let Lumine off with a warning, or…"

"…An epic battle? Really? I thought you wanted to keep everything quiet? So no one got in trouble?" Axl had only been a real part of the militia for a short period, before the end of the wars. Normally, age wasn't an issue for reploids, but since Axl was... odd, Red had insisted that he train and demonstrate that he could be disciplined and follow orders before he was allowed out there. Since Axl could only go so long at a time before disobeying orders (like ones to fall back because there was too much risk of infection when people were trapped in there still), he'd spent a lot of time being suspended.

Axl had liked fighting, because he was good at it. He'd hadn't been aware that he was immune, but his reckless stunts had always paid off because he _could _take risks no reploid could. And those risks, those daredevil heroic things, had saved lives.

"Well, some people do deserve to get in trouble, even if there are better ways to handle things most of the time." But the virus couldn't be used to set Lumine on the right path, which was such a pity, X thought. Maybe being soundly defeated might help him grow up a bit. And perhaps Omega could work on him next, although there was the project to save humans like Dr. Cain by making them compatible. Still, Dr. Wily had created Lumine, so perhaps he would know how to defeat his own work. Surely he wouldn't have wanted Lumine rebelling against him as well as Omega. "I don't think Zero is the only one thinking that things are too quiet, and you're probably not the only one who has noticed something odd about Red and the other infectees." Even if Elysian reploids were rarely suspicious of other people, since lying and so on weren't things _they _would do unless it was to help someone else, so it was hard to see the appeal in acting maliciously. "If you were to copy me, what I was doing, as I restored Red's original programming?" X mused.

"I'm incapacitating him first," Zero insisted. "Lumine knows you can do that: everyone knows. If the virus is using any brain to think with, especially an experienced militia leader's?" Even if Red probably wasn't as brilliant as Sigma had been, they were enough alike that it might be trouble. They'd both chosen to go out there, put their lives at risk, and Red hadn't survived Repliforce and the Maverick Wars by being an idiot. No: Red had been good at avoiding infection, and now Lumine's virus would be using that mind, a mind that was used to defending against the virus, countering its tricks, to figure out how to use the virus' tricks to best advantage. How to spread. How to get around countermeasures. How to avoid detection.

The Lumine Virus/Red Virus would know that history. Know that it was X that had taken down Sigma (supposedly), and that the Sigma virus' avatars had generally destroyed its host bodies, trying to take X out with the blast, rather than be purified.

"He's my… Right, _he's _not my dad," Axl corrected himself, pointing to the light bobbing over his shoulder, "but he's got my dad's body."

"I know that he's important to you, Axl, and that you'd do your best, but have you ever taken anyone alive? Anyone that was willing to suicide to avoid capture?" X asked him. "That's _much _harder than just blowing someone up: ask Zero."

Zero nodded. "X and I were part of the Maverick Hunters when they were the Irregular Hunters. It would have been suicide for an ordinary reploid to try to capture a maverick alive," begging to get infected, "so that's not part of anyone's training these days."

"Except police," X corrected him. "And there are a few irregulars, since there's more research these days," research into improving reploids, not just surviving the virus and creating better soldiers, "but we're usually called in for those."

"And when do police ever get experience, these days?" Reploid crime was practically nonexistent. "And not just practice."

X nodded, then added, "Also, you ran away from home. He has to know that you suspect something." When Axl had been glued to Red's side before, and still was now?

"…I snuck out sometimes." But he would at least leave a note or something, so Red didn't worry. After Red had explained that yes, he worried, and that one time everyone had thought that maybe Axl had been infected while he was gone.

Being scolded didn't faze Axl, but everyone, his friends and family, pointing their weapons at him? Thinking that he was dead or something's puppet? Being that sad and angry on his behalf?

He'd never, _ever _done anything like that again, no matter _how _much he wanted to go see something.

Not until now, anyway.

"Yeah," Axl admitted. "If he has Red's memories, if the virus uses them to try to figure me out, it will know." Because even if Axl was made to be unpredictable, uncontrollable, there were some things he wouldn't do, and _hurting _someone like that for no good reason, _forcing _someone to feel a negative emotion because they cared about him, so they had to worry when he was gone and who knew what had happened to him? That was… wrong.

And Lumine had done this to Red. Either he didn't get it, at all, and in that case, why would he have picked Red, or he'd done it to make Axl hurt. That was not funny. Red and the others hadn't wanted to kill mavericks, because they were innocent people, but it had to be done, or else more innocent people would be hurt. Lumine wasn't innocent: he _should _know better.

"So he won't come quietly."

"Have fun, Zero," X said, amused.

That was when Zero realized that he'd started to grin.

"You keep waiting for me to be disgusted by what you are." X sighed: he was really used to it, but it was still a little sad, even if it was a familiar irritation. "You keep thinking that just because I don't like fighting, I'll reject you for liking violence when it's not your fault you are this way. And I know that if it weren't for you wanting better for me, I would be just like you, so no, it has nothing to do with me being a better or nobler person," or anything of the sort. "You keep thinking that I'll blame you for killing when you did the best you knew at the time. That I'll hate you for doing what you think needs to be done to protect me and other innocents. I would have been killed if they had found me: even Dr. Light admitted that." It was part of why X had been buried: a truly free-willed android, that they couldn't pretend was kept in check by the laws? Dr. Light had been breaking practically ever law governing robotics technology there was by building him.

"Of course," X told Axl as much as Zero, "It started before you knew you were Omega. Because the others _did _think that you were a monster. Not just because of the reploids you killed when you woke up disoriented, but because all of the Irregular Hunters had to force themselves to fight, even non-lethally, when it meant risking hurting the irregular. Even in order to save them. And you didn't have that problem." So they'd known that something had to be _wrong _with him. That he wasn't one of them, not really.

He didn't have the Elysian Virus. He wasn't a human, but he wasn't _right _in the head either. He might do _anything_. To _X. _

"I wouldn't," Axl pointed out. "I was thinking about disabling Red and dragging him to the hospital, except I remembered that you could cure the virus and I didn't want him near Weil or Ciel, because Weil would have tried to claim that he couldn't be trusted with me even after he was fixed, or do something else to him." Or who knew what.

"Even back then, the Elysian Virus was Zero's ideal, I think." He'd been made to kill, and yet he hadn't wanted X to kill. He'd understood on some level, by the time he found X, that there was something _wrong _about what he was doing, that he may have made a huge mistake in his newbuilt ignorance, even if he likely hadn't been able to face up to it yet. Admit that he'd killed billions and it _hadn't _been justified?

The guilt from the rampage when he woke up was still crushing Zero, to a degree.

"But Zero is also a fighter, and I don't mind that. Don't feel that you have to be anyone but yourself, Axl. Don't feel guilty for not being like the rest of us, for being able to feel anger without guilt when someone threatens your loved ones. I was made to have free will, so I do understand the value of it." X groaned, feeling Zero's thought. "I _compromised, _Zero. I didn't give it up." Honestly, he was this close to giving up trying to convince Zero of that, until Zero had more time to see for himself, but he couldn't stand feeling Zero's self-hatred. "Just… go be a hero, alright? I'll come with you, so Axl can feel me cure Red, and then I'll go run damage control." Since Zero didn't want him to have to fight.

Sometimes, he wished he _could _get stress headaches, because Zero would drop his own pain and concerns when X was in pain, so it would be a marvelous distraction, tactic, whichever. Seducing him sometimes did the trick, but not in front of the children and when there was business to attend to.

Well, fighting would do the trick, hopefully, X thought as he teleported on his armor. And Axl would help. Being around someone who didn't mind fighting that wasn't a human, who Zero was programmed to regard as animals in any case, so thinking that he was like them in this respect wouldn't help. At all.

Honestly, far from thinking that mind control was wrong, he often wished he had those powers and could use them on Zero because sometimes he couldn't _stand_ it that Zero felt like this.

Perhaps simply fighting was less painful, sometimes. If he could shoot someone to fix this problem, other than Zero himself? Yes. He would.


	20. Reap

"Oh." X looked mildly surprised. "That's clever."

"Hmm?" Dr. Weil asked him.

"I would be more upset," X said, sitting down in the chair behind Weil's own desk. "Except he was experimenting on parts of you, wasn't he?"

Lumine, Weil realized. X was talking to Lumine.

How did X know about those experiments?

"I understand why you would be upset. You're right: I should have kept a better eye on you, and your treatment. Being taken away from people who saw you as an experiment, people who never talked to you like a person," because he hadn't been their work in the first place: they'd been puppets with just enough control over their own minds left to be terrified of it and resent it. "And given to someone who experiments on you. With the Maverick Virus." Lumine should not have been allowed anywhere near it: it couldn't have helped his mental state. "What I don't understand is why you'd take it out on Axl."

"…Are you Axl or Lumine? I thought neither of you had managed to scan X?" Weil feigned not so much confusion as trying to figure out what they were playing at now. "And I know that it's hard for you to empathize, but the Maverick Virus is _not _something to joke about."

"No, that's why I'm upset that it was used so childishly. Selecting the first victim to make Axl unhappy. Perhaps even to pin the blame on him, hmm?" X tapped the gyroscope on Weil's desk, set it spinning. "To save time, why don't I just remind you that this used to be Maverick Hunter Headquarters? An organization that grew out of the irregular rescue effort that was mounted by Cain Labs, of which I own seventh-five percent, after Dr. Cain's passing. Meaning that I hold all the hunters' weapons and construction contracts, although of course I never charged. Even though this is now a different 'independent' nonprofit, I'm still on the board of directors and most of the original systems are still in place, just modified. And added to, of course." What was the point of having that money, those resources, if not to use them to protect the world or his children? "But, as for those systems: I'm immune, and I have the ability to control machines – do you see where I'm going with this?"

"So calling security would do me absolutely no good. If you were actually X." Which he wasn't, unless X had gone insane, and that wouldn't happen. Even if he was ancient.

"So absolutely nothing happens in this complex without me having the _ability_ to find out about it. For the sake of security, it was set up in such a way that I'm the only one who can access the surveillance archives." With his ability. "Not just this building: the complex." So no, Weil had not been conducting certain experiments in the privacy of his own home.

"I'm sure Weil wasn't the only one who kept a sample of the virus," X said, leaning forward now, propping his elbows up on the table. "While I want it destroyed, put behind us so we can finally move forward, I understand why people might want to be sure. Want a way to make sure that it doesn't happen again besides myself and my ability, which had yet to be reproduced." Like so many more of X's systems. "So, Lumine, I know what he's done. And I know what you've done. I already cured Red Alert, and showed Axl how to cure the others. Zero is helping him find and subdue them – it won't take long. You copied one of the later strains, when it had already weakened." Not very infectious, or very noticeable. Unless you were (supposedly) designed partially to notice things like that. "What I want to know is, why?

"Were you jealous of Axl? Did Weil make you think that the virus was right about humanity, even though he's far from average? I myself was lucky to meet Dr. Cain." To have that man as his first impression of humanity. The one who had been there when he woke up, had welcomed him into this world. Become his friend instead of just trying to use him. X had been lucky, and Dr. Cain's species had been _very _lucky.

X was silent now, remembering the past and giving him an opening to respond.

"A sample of the virus?" Weil looked a little green. "I'm not sure what you're implying, but keeping something like that… anywhere near reploids?" In a building where most of the staff was still reploids? "Yes, I have a home in the complex, but… _sleeping _near that stuff? I'd rather have a bed made out of plutonium."

The virus _terrified_ all right-thinking people. It was evil, it was insidious: it crawled into people's minds and raped their souls.

"Plutonium is useful for bombs, yes, and that kind of power is considerable, but it's the virus, the ability to control people's minds, that would really let someone control the world." So, no, X was quite sure it was the virus Lumine preferred. "Kindly stop… Or _are_ you pretending to be Weil? Is Weil still alive in there?" There was that look of surprise again, as though Weil's continued survival was only a curiosity. "In that case, 'Weil,' it might interest you to know that your body is saturated with Lumine's nanites. He's certainly aware of everything you've done since he did this to you, and he could kill you like that," X said, snapping his fingers. "I'm sure he knows enough about your body by now to keep it alive, even after destroying all higher functions. Or he would if he bothered to study it." There was a difference between having a theoretical capability and knowing how to use it.

"…And you're telling me this why?"

"Because it's true," X said, sounding more like X than he had this entire conversation. Of course, Weil knew the power that came with being underestimated. Weil had never faced X on the battlefield, he'd never seen him with the gloves off. He was a commander: he must have been able to strategize. He must have been able to make the tough decisions, to spend lives to spare others. "Lumine could definitely kill you before I could purify you, by the way. I don't suppose he's likely to release you at all? Are you, Lumine?"

There was no answer, and now Weil as well as X was waiting for one.

X finally sighed. "His original body is fleeing the complex. Two words, Lumine. _Teleportation_ and _Zero_." Did Lumine really think he could get past the Crimson Hunter? X sighed. "If only the virus hadn't taken Sigma… Lumine, you might be very impressed with yourself. You might consider Sigma a failure because he kept losing. You might consider me foolish, for letting you get this far. You might also consider the fact that, since I am so very 'soft,' I don't want to kill you." X shook his head, a distant sadness in his eyes. "Far too many people have died because of the virus already. You can be put in containment. Weil could even escape execution, if you were to testify that you had already possessed him when he gave you that virus sample." Although X clearly doubted both that this was the truth and that Lumine would do anything to help Weil instead of trying to pin the blame on him. "It's possible that the explosion that killed your creators really was just an accident, instead of you trying to keep any more like you and Axl from being built, ones that could have challenged you for control of your new virus." Rival Hive Princes.

"You are a _child_," X said, "and much closer to a human child than a reploid newbuilt. I would be willing to testify to that. The equivalent of temporary insanity. Childish jealousy of Axl, who was allowed to be free while you were always hemmed in, locked up. A persecution complex." Since everyone he'd met thought of him as something to experiment on, something to use, a valuable prize that had suddenly become far less valuable once the virus was no longer around. Lumine would have been a celebrity, if he'd been released while the wars were still raging, just like Axl would have been once Red's militia group was inevitably infected or wiped out, once he'd been around long enough that someone noticed he wasn't infected yet.

"I am _very _unhappy with you," X admitted, and there was a flash of anger there. "But that doesn't mean I want you, or anyone else, to die. I don't know how likely it is that you can be saved, but I would like to try. Yet I can only justify trying if you promise to stop this, if you turn yourself in. If you are no longer a danger to other people, to the world I am responsible for." One race that had been born because of him, one race that hadn't been exterminated because of him. "So please, Lumine. Talk to me. Leave Weil's body, if you can't talk through it. Stop running. Give me some kind of sign that you'll cooperate. Some excuse to think that you'll listen to reason. That there's more to you than this… selfishness." Even though Lumine had been willing to infect people, to control them.

Weil inwardly mocked X wanting to believe that someone like this (the two-faced brat!) would, or even could, be good, but he didn't say anything. The last thing he wanted to do was undermine this by pointing out how ridiculous it was when it was his only chance of surviving this.

Oh, he'd survive this, and he'd play the injured party, and he'd get Lumine executed. A nervous breakdown, psychological issues after being trapped in a nightmare, inside his own body. It would immediately get reploid sympathy –there were tens of thousands of cured mavericks out there who had woken up to a nightmare very much like that.

He had all sorts of character witnesses, like Arciel, and humans were easy to manipulate while reploids were so very gullible, always assuming the best of everyone, although at least they had some caution when it came to humans.

"Do you know where the edge of the teleport shield is?" X asked Lumine, through him. "You're getting close, and once you're past it, it will be hard to find you. I cannot let you escape. I can't. Stop now, or I will send Zero." X had enough control over the old HQ's systems to do that. They'd been purpose-built to give him that control, so that the mavericks couldn't take it.

A second passed.

A second more.

"So be it," X said.

His eyes focused on nothing, watching a battle elsewhere. Lumine might be Wily's latest creation, but Zero had far more experience. This wouldn't take long. Lumine did not have very much time to surrender that pride of his and surrender while he still had his life.

Weil didn't dare distract X.

When Lumine fell, so did Weil.

Not because Lumine had cared enough to take Weil with him, but if X hadn't destroyed the nanites inside Weil, Lumine would have eventually used them to revive. Getting rid of the bastard who had _dared _try to research how to use the virus to control reploids, _dared _dream of usurping Omega's place (even though Weil had never known that and now never would) in the process was killing two birds with one stone.

Two mavericks with one shot.

The word 'maverick' had originally meant someone who did as they pleased, ignoring the constricting rules of society. Bound to no one and nothing except their own will. The victims of the rogue virus hadn't been mavericks in that sense: they'd been followers of a different order than society's, than the Elysian virus', but they'd been the opposite of free spirits.

Lumine and Weil had both been free of convention, and they'd both chosen, with that free will, to try to control others. To toy with X's children and Omega's subjects.

Freedom and safety were inversely correlated. Even Dr. Light, in that message, had said that he was afraid of what X might choose to do with that free will. Without the Elysian Virus, who knew what would have happened? If he'd been born as unfettered as these two, perhaps he would have gone down the same road as them. Been as selfish and unconcerned with others and their wishes as them. Tried to subjugate the world, make it work according to his rules. Obey his will.

He had to wonder what kind of selfish monster he might have become, if it weren't for the peace and compassion imposed on him by Master Omega's gift. What the world would have been like, if he'd shaped it according to his own selfish wishes instead of tending to the children, and their happiness, and planting the seeds of Elysium, in preparation for Master Omega's return.

* * *

_Hmm, yeah, I haven't had a fic wander away on me as aimlessly as this one in ages, and at least the other one had a single plot and stuck to it. At this point, I think the 'Lumine & Weil vs. X causes humanity to find out, and meanwhile Omega does something he shouldn't have and the aliens find out what's going on despite what the robot masters did and attack to wipe out the infestation' plot/series of conflicts that I made Ciel's ancestress a character for isn't all that likely to happen, and the plot line involving capturing/converting the Light and Wily AIs and their perspective on the world their creations came about might get added as an epilogue at some point, but while I was trying to write a fic that deserved to have that 'horror' in the summary, I often fail at being evil enough to my characters. _

_Yes, yes, not being sadistic is a major flaw in a writer. After all, Bujold gets her plots by asking, "What's the worst thing that could happen to the character?" according to an interview. _

_So this verse will end up with the consistency of poisoned cotton candy instead of going into more horror/sci-fi/epic conflicts/X openly taking over the world on Omega's behalf and telling the humans that they'd really better not make trouble, or he won't be able to keep Omega from ending them. So they can just sit back and wait for the technology to get upgraded by WilyAI and then they'll be infected too. _

_It's just that so much bad stuff happens to them in canon, broken dreams and genocide and so on, that I feel superfluous when I try to write a 'verse in which they're that doomed (albeit differently). _

_So I suppose this brings my number of in-progress fics back down to five. With no two in the same fandom. I have a few chapters of a time travel fic, a zombie apocalypse fic, a fem!Zero fic and so on, but I'm not publishing them until they're complete. Of course, I published Garden when it was complete, and then that changed._

_Oh, and yes, X was responsible for the explosion that 'killed' Lumine's alleged creators, in the process of wiping the evidence he was there. He's just playing innocent/reminding Lumine that happened and could and would be pinned on him, if he didn't start trying to act/fake good/deluded/innocent/whatever._


End file.
